A scholarly review of Chinese e-government solutions that allow citizens to message leaders, by Kathleen Hartford

E-government at the local level in China has emphasized numerous interactive features. One such feature has been the “leader’s mailbox” for citizen communications with the government. In the Yangzi Delta cities of Hangzhou and Nanjing, new reform-oriented mayors have emphasized e-government as an important tool for improving governmental performance; their decisions to publish many of the “mayor’s mailbox” communications online were intended to encourage grass-roots feedback, place pressure on bureaucratic agencies to change their behavior, and build a stronger popular image for local governments. The mailboxes in the two cities are managed differently, and differ in their articulation with other bureaucratic processes. Those differences may in part reflect somewhat different political priorities for the mayors, and may spell differences in the effectiveness and potential for institutionalization of this aspect of e-government. Ultimately, these mailboxes are effective because they work alongside other reforms in urban governance. By eliciting citizen feedback and increasing intragovernmental transparency, the mailboxes have become important information sources for government managers, but they are more likely to be effective in improving bureaucratic-administrative operations than in fostering participatory-democratic developments or progress towards civil society.