The Underlying Logics of Digital Transformation of Social Governance

With the support of new information technologies, social governance is experiencing rapid digital transformation. Under this background, the relationship between digital technology and social governance is a major practical and theoretical problem that needs to be addressed. Beyond macro and general theoretical discussion as well as micro and trivial empirical research, this paper proposes that there are three important underlying logics in the digital transformation of social governance from the middle level, namely (1) promoting connectivity, which facilitates openness and participation; (2) realizing digitization, which enhances intelligence and security; (3) facing the complexity, which enables us to better address the risks and challenges. These are incremental changes brought by the new information technology to social governance, which cannot be provided by traditional elements in the social governance system. These three underlying logics provide theoretical elaboration of the unique instrumental value of the new information technology to social governance. It is the direction of future research to make a more dialectical and comprehensive analysis of the conditions and possible unintended consequences of the application of new technologies in social governance practice from other perspectives.