Navigating the digital transformation: unravelling the dynamic evolution of smart city collaborative governance networks

Smart city initiatives, as public service innovation, represent a major evolution within state-led meta-governance, requiring complex inter-participant collaboration. Yet scholarship often treats these networks as static, missing how governance structures adapt to digital uncertainties. To fill this gap, this study employs stochastic actor-oriented models and collaborative governance theory to examine the evolution of network structures and participant attributes across 3482 smart city projects in China. Results reveal three governance patterns: government-dominated, government-SOE hybrid, and multi-stakeholder. Transitive triads, age similarity, geographic proximity, and size heterogeneity promote evolution, while outdegree constrains it. Findings guide optimizing partner selection and strengthening adaptive governance.