Abstract:

The disproportionate information processing implicates the scarcity of government’s attention. Decision makers need to prioritize multiple sources of information. The agenda of local government performance indicators is the embodiment of the government management problem of issue priority competition in China. Extant literature on government indicator governance mostly focuses on the static level such as building of static indicator model, but few on the dynamic agenda of government indicators from building to withdrawal. As a case of Province A’s performance indicator innovation, based on the disproportionate information processing, our study finds that the indicator alternative agenda, the indicator determination agenda and the indicator adjustment agenda have three dilemmas: “difficult to access” “difficult to determine” and “difficult to exit” under the differential structure of dual priority issues. Therefore, the decision-making level has solved the dilemmas by using the institutionalization of indicator application, indicator review and indicator evaluation. As a result, all of the inside and outside interest groups have agreed on the final priority issues, which is produced by the indictor agenda. This study not only explores the information theory to explain the internal logic of the issue priority competition in the indicator agenda in China, but also provides institutional solutions to the dilemma of the government’s indicator agenda.

Key words: disproportionate information-processing, issue priority, performance indicator agenda dilemma, institutional solution