社会资本视野下的服务型政府建构

社会资本是一种广泛而有效的社会资源,主要体现在社会资本理论中公民的信任与合作、有序的公民参与网络和公平正义的社会规范基础上.充分发挥这种资源的作用对建立社会主义服务型政府具有重大意义:一方面,服务型政府的建构依赖于公民的信任与合作;另一方面,服务型政府的实现离不开有序的公民参与网络;再者,服务型政府的运行依从于公平正义的社会规范及其价值理念.因此,必须大力培育以信任与合作为基础的社会资本,促进公民参与网络的建设,贯彻落实公平正义的社会规范,为建构社会主义服务型政府创造条件.     

社会资本:连接公民社会与协商民主的桥梁

公民社会作为介于国家与个人之间的社会正式和非正式的团体和网络,对于协商民主的实行具有重要的意义.而社会资本在增进信任、促进互惠合作及参与网络的实现方面具有特殊的功能,它能够引导、整合不同利益、增进矛盾各方的信任、化解各方面的冲突.国家和社会之间的社会资本,能够很好沟通、平衡和发展协商民主参与者之间的关系,促进公民与公民、公民与团体、公民与政府之间的信任、合作与协商.因此,社会资本是连接公民社会与协商民主的桥梁.这就要求我们激发和培育公民的公共精神,增强公民间信任关系;构建协商民主的公共领域,培养公民的参与意识和能力;培育第三部门和民众自组织网络,构建公民参与网络的新载体,从而为协商提供良好的社会资本基础.     

构建和谐社会需要社会资本建设

和谐社会和社会资本是中国学术界关心的热点问题.本文首先介绍社会资本的基本内涵,指出信任、规范、社会参与网络是社会资本的灵魂;然后分析社会资本对于构建和谐社会的重要意义,即社会资本有利于促进社会效率、保障社会稳定、培育社会公平;最后提出培育中国现代意义的社会资本,政府引导是前提、公民社会组织是关键.     

社会资本:民主发展的社会基础

社会资本所蕴涵的信任合作、心理认同、参与网络等是民主发展的内源基础.我国民主建设的困境,在于民主的社会资本基础薄弱.激发公民的公共精神,增强公民间信任关系,培养公民的参与意识和能力,构建公民参与的载体,是走出民主建设困境的重要途径.     

我国公民参与政策制定的社会背景分析

公民参与政策制定是中国在社会转型中的必然。社会的转型带来了一连串的社会背景的变迁,从各个层面上呼吁公民参与到政策制定中去,并在全社会营造一种建立在公开讨论协商和公民、社会与政府共同参与政策制定的民主氛围。对于推进我国公民参与政策制定的具体社会背景的分析,将有助于我们寻找一条适合中国国情的公共政策制定模式,从而推动公共政策制定的民主和科学。     

社会资本在政策过程中的效应及重构

社会资本是一种以信任为核心,以公民参与的网络为载体,以互利互惠的规范为运行规则的资源形式。充裕的社会资本储备往往产生凝聚力强的公民社会,这是公民积极参与制定、执行和评估公共政策的良好社会生态环境,也是现代自由民主制度产生的必要条件。通过公民参与社会网络培育公民个体之间或团体之间以及政府与公民之间的互信互惠机制,增强公共政策的合法性。然而中国一方面是以利益为纽带维系的深度信任的社会资本呈现出过剩的态势,另一方面以非营利组织为主要形式的“浅度信任”的社会资本不足,造成公共政策过程中出现“寻租”和腐败,政策变得专横和迟钝。因此必须重构社会资本,以实现社会资本与公共政策的良性互动。     

网络政治参与对中国政治发展的影响

网络政治参与有利于民主政治发展和政府管理创新,有利于进行政治宣传。规范网络政治参与的对策:制定完善的网络立法体系,规范公民的网络参与秩序;提高网民政治素质,培育网络公民意识;树立政治安全意识,加强国家信息安全保障能力。     

论网络政治参与对政府公共管理的影响

网络政治参与的发展是政府公共管理和体现社会主义民主政治的迫切需要,有利于落实以人为本的治国理念,使政府的社会服务更具有可选择性和向"公共服务"的治理理念转变。网络技术的虚拟性和隐蔽性,导致辨别网络政治参与信息真伪的困难性、非理性化发展对国家公共管理职能的不利影响。积极引导和培育公民社会、非政府组织等民间组织,转变政府管理社会的职能,建立健全公民参与机制,形成与公民政治参与的良性互动回应机制。     

政府信任的实质及其民主生成机制

在政治系统中,信任自身并不能自动成为社会善德,有时反倒可能被利用,成为一种权力控制的手段.因此,政府信任必须是理性的有限信任,是一种有节制的信任.民主行政既强调政府与公民进行合作互动,培育和积累社会资本,又保留一定程度对政府的理性不信任,加强对政府的监督和制约,为建构和谐的政府信任提供了多元化的生成机制.     

社会资本之于民主政治建设的意义——兼论中国"社会资本"和民主政治建设问题

社会资本所包括的信任、规范和网络等要素,对民主的社会基础之奠定深具意义。中国传统的“社会资本”是一种“关系资本”,不同于现代公民社会意义上的“社会资本”,不利于当代中国的民主政治建设。发展社会主义民主政治,建设社会主义政治文明,要求我们从中国实际出发,采取有效措施,促进中国传统“社会资本”向现代公民社会意义上的“社会资本”转型。     

Social Capital and Political Trust in Finland: An Individual-level Assessment

Political trust has in previous studies mainly been associated, either positively or negatively with a set of political variables, such as subjective knowledge of and interest in political issues, political efficacy, national pride, post-materialist values and corruption permissiveness. More recently, it has been debated whether or not indicators of social capital also have an impact on political trust. It has been argued that social capital helps to sustain civic virtues and that lack of it will create democratic problems like political dissatisfaction and declining political participation. While trends in social capital seem stable and high at the aggregate level in Finland, the level of political trust has varied to a much larger degree. In this article, indicators of social capital, political variables and social background variables are set against the Finns' trust in politicians and the parliament as well as their satisfaction with democracy. The analysis shows that social capital, as defined by a set of variables comprised of interpersonal trust and voluntary organisational activism, does not, en bloc, prove to be a powerful predictor of political trust. However, when the social capital items are examined as single factors, interpersonal trust seems to have strong impact on all levels of political trust, while the influence of voluntary organisational activity is less evident.     

民生决策中的公民参与——一个地方乡村治理的新技能与新策略

在乡村治理过程中,应如何提供有效的公共产品和公共服务?事关民生的决策,应以怎样的标准、在什么时候、多大范围、多大程度、以何种方式邀请和吸引公民参与?这是当今基层公共管理者迫切需要深思和回应的问题.浙江省温岭市泽国镇2005年在事关民生的公共基建项目安排上,以协商民主的方式,使公民参与到民生决策中去,为我们提供了一种在本土基层民主政治有了一定基础的情形下,公民参与的新技能与新策略,较好地回答了这一系列的问题.即:事关民生决策时,在所辖社区范围内,对所有公民,通过随机抽样的方式,以设计精良的程序邀请和吸引公民参与.泽国的善治样本带给我们的启示和价值意义在于:通过设计精良的公民参与程序,赋予公民参与民生决策的全过程,从而实现了政府的目标函数与公众的偏好相一致,保证了政府的行动镶嵌于社会之中,创新了协商民主形式,最大化了公共利益.这一地方经验,对于我们更加全面地制定和规划基层民主政治建设的目标与任务极具启示意义.     

Social Capital and the Dynamics of Trust in Government

It is well understood that trust in government responds to the performance of the president, Congress, and the economy. Despite improved government performance, however, trust has never returned to the levels witnessed in the 1950s and 1960s. Social capital may be the force that has kept trust low. If so, we need to assess the relative contributions of both government performance and social capital at the macro level. Using macrolevel data, the analysis, here, is designed to capture the variation over time in both social capital and government performance and let them compete to explain the macro variation in trust. The empirical results demonstrate that both government performance and social capital matter, but that social capital appears to be the force which accounts for the decline in trust over the last 40 years.     

Social innovation driven by citizen-led digital innovation: technologies of citizenship and the war on unemployment in Flanders

ABSTRACT

Citizens’ participation in technology design is increasingly deployed as a means to tackle social issues and a technique of empowerment. Techniques of empowerment belong to a set of strategies and methods employed by governmental and nonprofit organizations to constitute active, participatory citizens. This contribution exposes the political rationalities underpinning emerging initiatives that perpetuate citizens’ subjection by deploying participation as their essential governing technology. It analyses an initiative developed by a Belgian nonprofit organization to involve citizens in the design and development of digital tools to tackle unemployment. Findings unveil the potential downsides of participatory practices of technology design for social innovation. Critical reflections invite practitioners to pay greater attention to their design and implementation towards making them truly empowering processes.     

The utility of bonding social capital

Abstract

In most studies of social capital, bridging social capital is emphasized as ‘good’ for democracy and economic performance. It is rarer to find studies showing that bonding social capital can bring positive effects. Mostly, bonding social capital is either overlooked or depicted as the ‘villain’ that leads to ethnic conflict, intolerant behaviour and poor economic and democratic development. In this article, it is argued that this picture needs to be revised. If we assume that bonding trust is a negative force for development and democracy, we ignore a substantial portion of the political history of the West. Also, new empirical evidence from India suggests that bonding social capital is related to good governance. High levels of bonding trust cannot only facilitate political cooperation. They may also work as a shield against public sector employees who attempt to exploit citizens in a corrupt or clientelistic manner. The conclusion drawn in the article is that the view of social capital as a prime mover with inherent normatively attractive qualities should give way to a perspective where social capital is more properly regarded as an intermediate variable where the way it is combined with, or interacts with, other factors determines outcomes.     

试析中国政治体制改革的任务、经验及目标模式

中国现行政体是作为现代民主政体两种基本类型之一的人民民主政体.中国政治体制改革的基本任务是发展、完善现行人民民主政体,而非将其彻底否定,以自由民主政体取而代之.中国政治体制改革的一个成功经验,就是社会主义国家政治体制改革必须遵循坚持、发展、完善人民民主政体的原则.中国政治体制的目标模式应当是一种新型的人民民主政体,即以"坚持党的领导、人民当家作主和依法治国有机统一"为基本特征的新型人民民主政体.     

Bildung und die „neue“ Sozialdemokratie: eine Analyse aus der Sicht der vergleichenden Staatsausgabenforschung

The rhetoric of “reformed” social democracy has emphasized education and investment in human capital formation since the 1990s. Nevertheless, scholarly accounts of social democratic government policies have neglected the study of education politics. This article addresses the question of whether the move from traditional to reformist social democracy can be traced in the analysis of public social and education spending in the 1980s and 1990s. I show that government participation of social democrats went along with increases in social transfer spending in the 1980s, whereas in the 1990s, social democrats have instead increased spending on education, and higher education in particular, and curtailed spending on social transfers. The final section of the article discusses the implications of these findings for the future development of partisan theory.     

地方治理中的参与式预算——关于浙江温岭市新河镇改革的案例研究

参与式预算是一种公民直接参与决策的治理形式,是参与式民主的一种形式.实施参与式预算,能够促进公共学习和激发公民的权利意识,通过改善政策和资源分配,实现社会公正,以及改革行政机构.在这种直接的、自愿和普遍参与的民主过程中,人们能够平等讨论和决定公共预算、各项政策以及政府管理.在充分吸收国外参与式预算实践的基础上,浙江省新河镇基于国家既有的法律框架,以及民主恳谈的制度平台,开始实施预算改革,扩大了公民参与政府决策的广度和深度,深刻地影响着中国基层民主的发展.在理论分析和实地调查的基础上,运用比较分析的方法,初步探讨了参与式预算在中国地方治理中的兴起与发展,力图为中国地方治理,以及基层民主政治建设提供新的观察视角.     

信息公开、公众参与和开放型政府建设

传统行政管理组织的不透明性、严格的等级制度等,造成了一系列的政府问题。要解决这些问题就必须建立一种新型的政府,即"开放型政府"。开放型政府是一个信息输入与输出的循环体,公众参与即输入的过程,信息公开则是输出的过程,而"开放"就是由一个输入和输出构成的不断互动的环路。建设开放型政府是全球化和知识产业化的必然要求,是民主的必然要求,是世界各国政府建设的必然趋势,它对中国意义更加重要。目前开放型政府建设还存在诸如信息公开不足、公众参与不够等问题,因此,要加强开放型政府建设应该从这两方面入手:通过转变观念、加强立法等促进信息公开;从扩大基层民主、拓宽公民参与渠道等推动公众参与。     

Macro Measures and Mechanics of Social Capital

Interest in social capital has grown as it has become apparentthat it is an important predictor of collective well-being.Recently, attention has shifted to how levels of social capitalhave changed over time. But better measures are required totest even basic hypotheses such as establishing the directionof causality between the two components of social capital. Inthe following analysis, I develop macro measures of social capitalthrough the development of longitudinal measures of civic engagementand interpersonal trust. I use these measures to test basicassumptions about social capital. The result is not only thefirst over time measures of social capital, but also an increasein our understanding of social capital as a macro process withcomplex causes and effects.