Multiple Actors in China’s Community and Neighborhood Governance: A Systematic Critical Review of Roles, Strategies, and Governance Tensions

Abstract

China’s community and neighborhood governance has become increasingly multi-actor, yet the literature remains fragmented across residents’ committees, homeowner self-governance, social organizations, crisis response, and participatory regeneration. This systematic critical review synthesizes 62 English-language studies published from 2018 to 2025. The final evidence base comprised 38 original studies and 24 supplementary additions and was tiered into 45 core studies for prevalence analysis, 15 supplementary studies for mechanism enrichment, and two background studies. A deductive–inductive protocol linked actors, functions, strategies, and governance tensions, while evidence anchors, two-pass coding, relevance appraisal, and claim weighting constrained interpretation. Participation and mobilization appeared in 38 of 45 core studies, coordination and brokerage in 34, and representation and self-governance in 22. Cross-study comparison shows convergence around continuing state infrastructural power and the importance of brokerage, but divergence over whether Party-state steering, NGO delivery, homeowner organization, and project-based participation expand autonomy or reproduce control. Five strategy clusters and five recurring tensions are synthesized in an Actor–Function–Strategy–Tension (AFST) framework. The framework explains why actor pluralization can generate service capacity, coordinated action, and resident influence in some settings while producing dependency, tokenism, politicization, commercialization, or unequal representation in others. The review contributes a relational explanation of state-structured pluralism and identifies implications for evaluating decision rights, representation, resource control, accountability, and the durability of participation.