Does top-down administrative regulation promote urban safety performance? A quasi-natural experiment with evidence of listed special supervision in China

Despite the ample literature on safety regulation with an administrative angle, research about how the vertical intervention of central government shapes local governance is still limited. This study sets out to address this gap in a city-based quantitative approach. Specifically, we select the policy of listed special supervision, taken by the Safety Commission of China's State Council, to investigate whether and how the central top-down policy intervention affects the urban government's regulatory performance on a local basis in China. Using panel data from 52 cities from 2010 to 2021, we take listed special supervision implementation as a quasi-natural experiment and examine its policy effects on reducing the urban mortality rate of major accidents. We find that listed special supervision positively affects city regulatory performance, and this promoting effect is significantly attenuated by the interference of corruption. Moreover, listed special supervision’s positive effect is stronger in provincial capital cities (higher hierarchy) than non-capital cities (lower hierarchy). The diverse impacts of listed special supervision also suggest that the Chinese urban power structure and layer-by-layer pressure might compromise the effects of superior's regulations. Empirically, with the panel data for city-level government we found robust evidence supporting our theoretical hypotheses and verifying the policy mechanism in an authoritarian context. Future research is necessary to clarify the heterogeneity effects of listed special supervision by collecting more information on city characteristics and safety policies. Points for practitioners This research reveals the influences of top-down inspectorate supervision on local compliance with a safety regulatory mandate among the hierarchy of city governments. The findings suggest that the maneuvers of city governments in a hierarchical urban system and the inhibitory effect of local corruption in implementing superior's policies should be taken seriously by practitioners when designing regulations to enhance urban safety governance.