Analysis of Policies on Government Purchase of Services Based on Content Analysis

This paper adopts content analysis to study the policy texts of the central government and 25 provinces (municipalities and autonomous regions) regarding government purchase of services from 2013 to 2020, and builds a three-dimensional analytical framework of “types-focus-tools”. The study finds that in recent years, the policies on government purchase of services in various regions of China have been focused on market mechanisms, social organizations, and public institutions. In terms of the application of policy tools, authoritative tools play the dominant role, while fewer voluntary tools are adopted. The internal proportion of the same type of policy tools is not balanced, and the distribution of regional policy tools is differentiated. Therefore, it is necessary to accelerate the improvement of special policies, build a diversified system of policies for “weak” regions, give full play to the reference role of the policy focus of advantageous regions, and improve and balance the proportion of regional policy tools to further optimize the policy structure.