The American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) Annual Conference 2026 was held in Los Angeles, CA, United States from  March 20 to 24. The theme of the 2026 conference, “Building a Bridge to Renewal and Resilience,” focused on key challenges and opportunities in contemporary public administration. As a premier international event in the field of public administration, the ASPA Annual Conference brings together practitioners and scholars from government agencies, universities, and nonprofit organizations to advance excellence in public service and engage with cutting-edge issues in public governance. Our faculty member at the Department of Public Administration, Sicheng Chen, Yanbing Han, and Ruoxuan Liu, as well as graduate students, Chang Cui and Yuhao Liu, were invited to attend the conference and present their research.

Professor Sicheng Chen presented a research paper entitled “Representation Without Recognition: Organizational Hierarchy, Managerial Attention, and Gendered Perceptions of Public Organizations.” This study examines the predicament of converting women's “descriptive representation” into “substantive representation” within public bureaucracies, investigating whether and how two critical factors—organizational hierarchy and managerial attention—shape gendered perceptions of organizational performance. These findings offer novel perspectives for comprehending gender dynamics and organizational equity in multi-level governance.

Dr. Yanbing Han presented his research at the panel on “Public Safety, Budgets and Public Trust”, with the paper titled “Searching for Safety: The Jogger’s Dilemma of Chinese Local Budgets”. The study explores how local governments balance the trade-off between “ensuring safety” and “promoting economic growth” in an era of fiscal austerity. It calls for a new budgeting orientation toward resilience.

Dr. Ruoxuan Liu presented a research paper titled “Predicting Forum Drifting in AI Accountability: Decision Outcome, AI Effectiveness and Transparency” at the parallel session on “Accountability, Legitimacy and Public Trust in Algorithmic Governance”. This study focuses on “forum drifting” in the context of AI use in public service provision. It examines whether and how three key factors (decision outcome, AI effectiveness, and transparency) influence the degree of forum drifting. The paper is expected to advance scholarship on AI governance by identifying the contingent drivers of citizen disengagement.

Chang Cui, a postgraduate student, presented a paper titled “Public Governance in the Short Video Era: Agenda Setting and Mobilization” at the panel “What are We Doing with Technology?” By integrating perspectives from media ecology and public governance theory, the research develops a dynamic analytical framework encompassing platform ecosystems, opinion leaders, emotional mobilization, and collaborative governance. Through an empirical case study of the “pre-prepared meals entering campuses” issue on Douyin, the study finds a reversal in agenda-setting processes, where ordinary citizens rather than institutional actors act as primary drivers. Meanwhile, emotional mobilization exhibits a paradoxical pattern, with “news/event-framed” content serving as focal points for collective emotional expression.

Yuhao Liu, a postgraduate student, presented his research findings entitled “What Is Your Business? Understanding the Street-Level Bureaucrats’ Task Competency” at the parallel forum on “Civic Engagement of Employees and Workforce Participation”. Adopting a combined method of scenario experiment and grounded theory, the research reveals the core competency requirements of street-level bureaucrats in human-AI co-governance, offering new ideas for enhancing the efficiency of public services. 

In addition to the presentations, Professor Sicheng Chen’s collaborative paper, “Where You Are Matters: Network Position, Designed Network, and Central Government Agency Termination,” published in the international journal Public Administration, has been awarded the 2026 Best Paper Runner-up by the Section on Chinese Public Administration (SCPA) of the American Society for Public Administration. This study is pioneering in quantitatively demonstrating the critical role of designed network position in the survival of central government agencies, offering an important theoretical perspective for understanding the structural dynamics and organizational change within China’s administrative system.

Professor Sicheng Chen also serves as a member of the Council of the International Chapter of the ASPA. During the 2026 ASPA Annual Conference in Los Angeles, he actively participated in and helped organize multiple key events for the Chapter，such as the Chapter’s Business Meeting, the International Scholars Reception and the Journal Editors Roundtable. Through these activities, Chen is committed to fostering academic dialogue between China and the rest of the world, expanding collaborative networks, and actively enhancing the presence and influence of Chinese public administration scholars on the global academic stage, thereby strengthening the international visibility and impact of Chinese academic research. The International Chapter is a specialized body under ASPA established to serve scholars and practitioners outside the United States, aiming to build a global exchange platform for public administration academics.

Founded in 1939, ASPA is one of the most influential professional academic organizations in the field of public administration worldwide. The participation of our faculty and students in delivering presentations and organizing multiple activities at this conference not only demonstrated the research capabilities of Chinese scholars in the field but also made contributions to promoting international academic exchanges in public administration.