Temporal governance and accountability costs of Beijing's digital citizen request system

Abstract

Prior literature highlights democracies' struggle to cope with today's rapid socio-economic changes, contrasting with more adept responses in authoritarian systems. This study makes a first attempt to explain the perceived speediness in an authoritarian setting. By focusing on Beijing's digital service request system, Jiesu Jiban, we argue that in creating request categories, standardizing cadres' reactions to requests, and designing decision pathways, Jiesu Jiban is not only an instrument to deal with increasing complexity and acceleration of socio-economic development, but the system itself also creates acceleration. It does so by categorizing, specifying, and standardizing service requests and response procedures and by channeling these through a digital infrastructure. We show that the datafication of governing citizens' request increases pressure for frontline administrators co-producing a system of responsibility without accountability for the central government.