The relationship between development and governance is a central question in the public
administration literature on developing countries. Yet, we still understand little
about the gap between urban and rural governance in these nations. Our paper tackles
this issue using the novel Vietnam Provincial Governance and Public Administration
Performance Index (PAPI). PAPI is Vietnam’s largest nationwide survey, and it is considers
six dimensions of local public administration, including participation, transparency,
accountability, corruption control, administrative procedures, and public service
delivery. Using a small area estimation approach we present three new findings. First,
urban citizens report better local governance and public administration than rural citizens
do. Second, districts with better reported governance tend to have a smaller urbanrural
public administration gap. Third, this gap follows a U-shaped pattern, decreasing
initially and then increasing slightly as local living standards rise. These findings have
implications for priorities in public administration reforms.