Research on the evaluation and enhancement mechanisms of standardized holistic governance from the perspective of policy coordination

Measuring and evaluating the level of holistic governance in government and exploring its improvement mechanisms can help address the fragmentation problem in cross-domain governance. As policy coordination serves as an important indicator of holistic governance, this study analyzes standardization policy texts from 15 provinces between 2014 and 2022. The LDA model is used to identify policy theme distributions between central and local governments, the PMC index model is employed to evaluate policies and construct an indicator system, and a coordination degree model is applied to measure horizontal and vertical policy coordination, thereby forming governance measurement results. Furthermore, the fsQCA method is adopted to analyze the influencing pathways of five variable configurations on governance levels. The findings reveal significant disparities in the level of standardized holistic governance across regions, with unstable governance effects. Individual factors in social, institutional, and technological dimensions do not constitute necessary conditions for a high level of holistic governance; instead, they exhibit certain substitutability. Four distinct pathways are identified that enhance standardized holistic governance, demonstrating equifinality. Under specific conditions, local governments can overcome constraints imposed by institutional and resource limitations and choose context-appropriate pathways to improve their standardization governance capacity.