Can authoritarianism retain continuous local innovation? A perspective of innovation ecosystem

The ‘decline thesis’ posits that centralisation of power often signals a decline in local government innovation. Drawing on the innovation ecosystem theory, however, we move beyond this thesis to discover the institutional resilience in top-down governance. By analysing Chinese provincial practices from 2003 to 2022, we find that innovation did not significantly falter following the 2013 recentralisation. Instead, the underlying drivers of innovation underwent a structural shift, from a ‘bureaucratic championship’ logic—characterised by ‘upward competition and downward arrangement’ – to an adaptive logic that is ‘agency-multidimensional and efficacy-oriented’. We conclude that this shift originates from the reconstitution of the local government’s ecological niche within a transforming innovation ecosystem.