Abstract:

The supply-demand mismatch in the petition system manifests the inherent contradiction between the limited provision of public services and the diverse demands of the populace. lt is caused by the tension be-tween the public sector's pursuit of order maintenance and the public 's quest for rights and interests. However, the existing approaches to address this issue primarily focus on improving either the supply or demand side. For in-stance, one prevalent strategy involves designating social work organizations as governmental agents andemphasizing their efforts to alter citizens’ petitioning behaviors. This approach fails to resolve the underlyingtension and places social work organizations in a professional predicament. The successful cases collected from fieldresearch illustrate the necessity of repositioning the efforts of social work organizations within the tension betweenthe supply and demand sides. By adopting a dual mole of burden-sharing and cognition-integration, social work or-ganizations can identify the common ground between the behavioral motivations of petitioning departments and the public. This convergence aligns with petitioning departments’ objective of dispute resolution but also caters to thepublic's needs. Social work organizations can resolve the supply-demand mismatch by fundamentally alleviating the tension between the supply and demand sides. As a microcosm of social governance, the petitioning social workprojects show the feasibility and mechanisms of social organizations’ involvement in resolving the mismatch between the provision and demand of public services. It further offers valuable insights for exploring how diverse social re-sources contribute to upholding the social governance system based on collaboration, participation, and shared interests, thereby significantly enhancing the effectiveness of social governance.

Key words: petitioning social work, social governance, public service provision, burden-sharing, cognition-integration