Does top-down accountability promote responsiveness? Evidence from a survey experiment in China

Does top-down accountability spur bureaucrats to improve service provision? This paper highlights the potential drawbacks of top-down accountability for building a responsive bureaucracy. Based on an online survey experiment involving 923 bureaucrats in China, we find that bureaucrats are less responsive to citizens’ needs when they are exposed to the risk of being sanctioned and the recent remedial policy of principled tolerance cannot offset such effects. In contrast to scholars arguing that increased top-down accountability pressure improves government responsiveness, these findings imply that insulating bureaucracy allows them to do their jobs more responsively. The findings enhance our understanding of accountability and responsiveness in China and beyond.