Structured Governance Capacity and Routine Effectiveness: Evidence From China-Laos Border Villages

This study empirically examines how different dimensions of governance capacity translate into routine governance effectiveness within institution-dense, discretion-constrained border villages. Challenging the traditional additive capacity logic, this research proposes a structured-capacity framework, arguing that capacity dimensions function unevenly. Drawing on 400 survey responses from the China-Laos frontier, the study uses exploratory factor analysis and multiple regression to assess five capacity dimensions: collective action, coordination, resilience, learning, and resource integration. The findings show that learning capacity is the strongest, most stable predictor of perceived governance effectiveness, underscoring its pivotal role in turning institutional mandates into repeatable administrative routines. Resource integration provides a secondary enabling effect, whereas coordination, collective action, and resilience exhibit no stable direct impact on routine outcomes. Ultimately, the study concludes that effective grassroots governance depends less on cumulative capacity expansion and more on the crucial organizational ability to institutionalize continuous learning and routinize complex policy implementation under constrained local discretion.