Abstract: The existing literature on national governance models has focused on the analysis of long-term and stable public organizational processes between different levels of governmental and social organizations. In contemporary China, a considerable part of the organization and implementation process in public services relies on the cooperation among different local governmental institutions and social groups. This leads to short-term and unstable relations in the process. This study applies the perspective of control theory to analyze the relationship between the three parties of the principal (government), the management (offices in charge) and the implementation agency (organizations) in the case of college entrance examination grading standard variation in Province X. The study finds that even though the relationship presents a highly correlated governance model, the three parties do not belong to the same bureaucracy and lack administrative oversight within the process, thus increase uncertainty in negotiation and maneuver, resulting in two issues. First, often the principal and management have divergent views on goals. With the advantage of controlling incentive distribution, the principal is able to involve itself in inspection and evaluation of policy implementation, and therefore maintains the ability of arbitrary intervention in the process. Second, the implementation agency's behavior is constantly influenced and modified by the feedback from the principal and management and vice versa. In the process of continuous feedback and adjustment, the three parties gradually reach their own shared understanding of policy implementation that becomes the cause of local variation of test grading standard. This paper suggests that unstable public organization process is an important area of study on contemporary Chinese governance. Control theory can be further explored as an analytic tool and strategies of various social forces in gaining organization control should also be investigated in depth.

Key words: state governance, unstable public organization process, public institution, control power, new college entrance examination