The Reconfiguration of City-Level Social Governance Guided by Party Building in China

China’s city-level social governance guided by the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) Party building emphasizes the alignment of governing actors with clearly delineated responsibilities, signaling a shift from a governance logic centered on the exercise of political authority to one grounded in organizational techniques. Drawing on grounded analysis of pilot cities advancing the modernization of city-level social governance, this study finds that local governments have developed a range of innovative Party-building models, such as grid-based, consortium-based, service-oriented, and downward-embedded Party building, which have enhanced the leadership capacity, organizational strength, social cohesion, and responsiveness of primary-level Party organizations. From the theoretical perspective, the essence of city-level social governance guided by Party building lies in a multidimensional empowerment framework that integrates political, organizational, and technological capacities. Through this framework, three core governance bottlenecks are addressed with precision: the difficulty of forging shared strategic direction, weak coordination of motivational forces among multiple actors, and efficiency losses resulting from information barrier. From the standpoint of practical experience, the Party-building-guided approach emerges from the coupling of party logic with governance logic and has generated a set of profound structural transformations. The organizational system has evolved from fragmented, department-and-region segmentation into an integrated and multidimensional Party-building architecture; primary-level organizations have shifted from merely securing social recognition to establishing institutional authority; mechanisms of dispute resolution have moved from end-stage, reactive handling toward source-oriented governance; and the underlying driving forces have undergone a fundamental transition from administrative compulsion to value-based motivation.