China's Campaign-Style Implementation Regime: How is "Targeted Poverty Alleviation" being achieved locally?

By integrating policy regimes and campaign theories, this article investigates the institutional mode by which China's local governments transcend their structural-interest constraints and overcome their capacity deficits to successfully implement targeted poverty alleviation (TPA) policies. Using a "campaign-style implementation regime" framework and three counties as cases, we analyzed and coded the institutional structures, elements, and mechanisms for achieving the counties' TPA goals. First, the case study indicates that the campaign redistributed local political attention and became the "idea glue" for policy integration. Second, through the campaign, horizontal and vertical, formal and informal, institutional arrangements were constructed to redistribute decision-making power, and coordination mechanisms were built within the Tiao/Kuai system. Third, the campaign constructed complex interest-alignment mechanisms within the political system, involving many actors and changing their motivational structures. In addition, we found that the campaign-style implementation regime was achieved through local governments' institutional reintegration and recombination between structures and actors. Theoretically, the campaign-style implementation regime provides a new analytical perspective on the dynamics of regime construction and the institutional elements within a campaign. Practically, it offers an escape route for developing countries ensnared in a capacity trap.