中国府际关系的路径依赖和现实选择

目前,西方对府际关系的理论研究和现实实践都已比较成熟,但在中国,无论是上下级政府间,还是平级地方政府间都存在着不得不解决的困境.以横纵两个向度的政府关系为研究焦点,借助“竞争型政府”和“合作型政府”的概念,以及新制度变迁理论,以纵向“钱粮之统”和横向“地域之分”的历史演进过程为例,探究古代中国权力运行逻辑和府际关系设置规则,具体分析中国府际关系普遍存在着纵向的合作性有余而竞争性不足,以及横向的竞争性有余而合作性不足的制度性困境,在此基础上探讨何种制度变迁方式才能更好地解决当下中国面临的府际关系问题,十分重要.     

论我国政府问责制之现实困境以及出路

建构政府问责制的理论支撑,可以从政治学、法学、新制度经济学和信息经济学等不同层面的考量中得以充分说明。政府问责之目的是规约官员行为,改善公域与私域的关系。由于政府责任界分的模糊、问责主体权力的冲突、政府信息公开的有限、政府绩效评估机制的缺失、公民参与问责的匮乏以及公共行政文化变迁的滞后等因素的存在,政府问责制在实施中面临诸多困境。因此,必须及时进行制度创新,克服政府问责制面临的困境,发挥其预期的功效。     

论和谐社会视野中的政府能力建设

政府能力是政府实现其职能所具有的能量与资源。政府能力在社会转型和历史变迁中既是一个常量又是一个变量。在全球化背景下,政府的能力供给与构建和谐社会对政府能力的需求出现了落差与失衡,政府能力建设面临着种种困境与挑战。为了构建和谐社会,政府必须提升综合能力水平,在某些能力缺位领域开发新的创生渠道。     

生态环境治理的困境及其克服

面对生态环境危机,学者们提出的解决之道无外乎“利维坦”和私有化两种方案。然而目前的现实是:不管是私有化——市场还是中央集权——利维坦,在生态环境治理中都已面临着深深的困境。建立多中心合作治理结构、提升政府环境治理能力、构筑公众参与的基础、建立政府与企业的合作伙伴关系将成为生态环境治理的有效途径。     

论生态型政府的逻辑困境与出路——基于技术约束和制度约束的分析

生态型政府在当代中国面临着严格的逻辑困境.这种困境首先由生产技术约束引起,并且由于制度约束而加剧,主要体现在生产方式的资本增殖性质、资本积累的原始性、社会追逐物质富足的迫切性、国际竞争的激烈状况等方面,最终表现为社会发展战略的进退维谷,政府生态责任的约束软化,政府生态管理出现系统弊病.我们认为,不打破这种逻辑困境,就不可能在中国建设生态型政府.     

制度的弹性空间:经济发达镇治理能力的提升逻辑北大核心

随着经济发达镇财政实力、人口规模和管理幅度的不断增大,传统的乡镇管理体制无法适应其发展需求,乡镇面临的权小责大困境日益突出;而经济发达镇却能把“小马”变成“强马”,以往研究未能很好地解释其治理能力为何得以拓展的逻辑。文章首先探讨了经济发达镇“小马拉大车”的困境,并基于组织社会学的视角,从科层制规定的“定职能、定机构、定编制”的“三定”方案制度出发,分析上级政府对经济发达镇的重视程度与资源倾斜情况,挖掘经济发达镇治理能力提升的逻辑。通过进一步探讨发现,由上级政府发起的强镇扩权改革并未完全解决“小马拉大车”的体制困境,拓展经济发达镇治理能力的努力存在一定的限度。最后,从经济发达镇争取弹性空间中的制度性资源层面提出基层治理能力拓展的理论解释。     

政府购买视角下的社会组织发展路径思考

政府购买作为维系政府与社会组织合作的重要方式,是我国公共服务制度的重大创新,也是社会组织发展的重要契机。目前我国政府购买社会组织服务还面临诸多现实困境,应从以下几方面着手完善社会组织发展:一是构建政府与社会组织的良性合作环境;二是突破体制困境,改革社会组织管理体制;三是增强社会组织自身能力,提高公共服务质量;四是调整布局结构,提高社会组织服务供给能力。     

政府信息公开中的公众参与困境及对策探究民主与法治

政府信息本质上是一种公共资源和公共财产,应由社会共享。政府信息公开制度实施已近五年,但政府信息公开依旧犹如一道玻璃门,看似前景无限却又无路可走,公众仍面临申请难、答复难、救济难等诸多困境。课题组通过检测450个省、地级政府门户网站政府信息公开指南建设情况,以及近五年见诸报纸、新闻网站的296个公众申请案例,分析公众申请所面临的困境,并从制度设计和制度实践的角度提出相应的对策建议,以期推动政府信息公开制度的完善与实践。     

政府经济管理职能的困境与出路

当前各级政府在经济管理中面临着诸多挑战,如政府的管理理念、管理目标、管理方式等方面均存在着对新形势的适应问题。转换经济管理思维,积极构建责任政府才能走出当前困境。     

政府改革困境的制度结构性视角分析

目前,政府改革已成为我国经济改革和社会改革的关键,迫切需要我们深刻把握政府改革的规律.然而在现实中,政府改革面临着严重的实施困难,政府职能转变与政府机构改革双重不到位.从"国家悖论"与"政府失灵"理论出发,一般认为,政府改革面临的困境往往是由于政府制度变迁中制度供给主体缺失造成的,在理论上形成了难以深入分析的死结,也无助于政府改革的推进.认为,政府的角色冲突不是政府改革困境的根源和本质,而只是在考虑整体制度间均衡时的结果,忽略了政府的结构性特征;借鉴了公共管理理论中的政治家-官僚分析范式,以结构性分析的思路为主线,拓展了政府改革的两方博弈框架.从而认为政府改革困境的本质是政治家与官僚间在政府改革中的目标冲突与信息不对称;并分析了阻碍政府改革顺利推进的路径依赖效应与改革激励不足的问题.指出,要打破政府改革面临的困境,可以从改革的社会沟通与激励,财政约束,官僚机构的偏好与理念,以及全面长效监督等方面着手.     

Reviews

Recently, various authors have examined the relationship between growth in government size and total economic growth. In each case, the authors permitted only a monotonic relationship. This paper examines the issue of a non-linear relationship between growth in government and overall growth in the economy.Government contributes to total economic output in various ways. The provision of Pigovian public goods enhances the productivity of the private sector inputs increasing total output. However, the public decision-making process can result in an inefficient quantity of public goods. The likelihood of this outcome increases with the size of government. Further negative effects are created by the revenue raising and spending mechanisms of government, and the increasing diversion of resources into unproductive rent-seeking activities. The magnitude of these effects is likely to increase with the relative size of government.     

Depoliticization,Citizenship, and the Politics of Community in Hong Kong

This article critically examines the government discourses on citizenship and community in Hong Kong from the 1960s to the present. By making special reference to the government's discourses on three public events—the 1966 Hong Kong Government 1966 Report of the Working Party on Local Administration Hong Kong Government Printer  [Google Scholar] Star Ferry riots, the 1981 riots, and scuffles such as those that took place at the Cultural Center, Tsimshatsui, on Christmas and New Year's Eve of 2002—it reconstructs the meaning of good citizenship as promoted by the Hong Kong colonial and Special Administrative Region (SAR) governments, respectively. These three public events are selected as cases highly indicative of what the government expects an ideal citizen to be because all of them aroused substantial public attention which subsequently invoked considerable government discourses and action. Citizenship is built upon a shared sense of community. Considered in this context, this article also traces the understanding of community of the governments, as it is intertwined with the notion of citizenship, through the development of government policies on youth and citizen education in the city from the 1960s onward. It is obvious that citizenship is constituted from both above (by the government) and below (by the civil society). By reconstructing the government discourses in this regard, this paper will shed light on part of the process of citizenship making in Hong Kong.     

Forty Years of German Federalism: Past Trends and New Developments

This article traces the major developments in German federalismfrom 1949 to the present. From a system based on a concept of"dual federalism," which was different in important ways fromthe American system, German federalism became somewhat morelike the postwar American cooperative federalism. Criticismof this system in the 1970s led to various reform efforts, whichmade little headway until the 1980s and the formation of a CDU/CSU-FDPcoalition government under Chancellor Helmut Kohl. The "turnabout"promised by this government and carried out to some extent includedplans and policies to strengthen the Länder by some sortingout of functions. These efforts were successful at first, butthe federal government has oriented its policies more towardthe national arena. Financial constraints, the nationalizationof basic rights, technological concerns, and pressures by theEC have led to new tendencies toward intergovernmentalizingand centralizing the relations between the federation and Landgovernments.     

The possibility of a desirable minimal state

There is a near consensus that organized special interests use influence to expand government into activities that are detrimental to the public at large. Consequently, as Lee (1989) suggests, it would be desirable if the general public had more control over political decisions — if government were more responsive to the public interest. However, the public interest like rent-seeking, is a subjective concept (Pasour, 1987).The possible existence of a desirable minimal state is not disproved by an approach that assumes utilities are interpersonally comparable. Individual utilities are subjective and ordinal and hence, cannot be added or weighted to determine the level of government that is socially optimal. If one accepts the subjectivist approach, it follows that no one can decide upon any policy whatever in the absence of an ultimate ethical or value judgment (Rothbard, 1982: 212). In this respect, determining the desirable minimal state is no different from determining whether an individual government program is desirable (or whether it represents rent-seeking waste).     

Government Shekels without Government Shackles? The Administrative Challenges of Charitable Choice

As President Bush plans to expand "Charitable Choice," civil libertarians worry that the legislation is part of a new assault on separation of church and state. Religious Right activists demand assurances that funds will not flow to groups like the Nation of Islam or Scientologists. African American pastors in urban areas—arguably the main targets of the initiative—are concerned that "government shekels" will be accompanied by "government shackles," that the costs and regulatory burdens accompanying collaborations with government will divert resources from client services and mute their prophetic voice.
Caught in the middle are public managers, who must make the legislation work in the face of significant administrative challenges. Those challenges occur in three areas: contracting procedures, contract administration, and evaluation. In each of these categories, political realities and constitutional constraints will significantly complicate the manager's job.     

THE MANAGEMENT AND ADMINISTRATION OF GOVERNMENT RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

One of the minor curiosities of public sector analysis in Australia is that rather little attention has been paid to the tools and instruments that could provide a more effective management of government research and development. Once government R & D is mentioned, we immediately think of the large statutory bodies such as CSIRO or the Atomic Energy Commission, but the subject extends widely beyond these two bodies. The Australian Government, federal and states, provides 70% of all the funds for Australian R & D, and the government itself performs, in its own laboratories and statutory authorities, 54% of the total R & D carried out in Australia Of OECD countries, these percentages of government activity are exceeded only by Iceland, New Zealand, Portugal and Turkey. Virtually every federal department and every department of each state government performs R&D. Apart from the "big two" of CSIRO and Atomic Energy, the Post Office, Defence, Health, Housing, and Minerals and Energy all have research laboratories, and the last major survey of Australian R & D in 1973 listed 22 federal departments and 130 organizations in the State Governments performing R & D. A recent article in this journal correctly noted a shift from "ends to means" in Australian science policy. The present article proposes a specific means of managing this almost unique public involvement in R & D in Australia.     

Changing Patterns of Party Competition in Austria: From Multipolar to Bipolar System

The Austrian party system has entered a new phase since the controversial ÖVP-FPÖ coalition came into office in February 2000. The party system literature offers two contradicting expectations about party system mechanics in multi-party systems without relevant extremist parties: competition structured by party alliances and strictly competitive relations between government and opposition parties (as suggested by <citeref rid="b30">Sartori 1976</citeref>) versus competition structured by individual parties and some mix of competition and co-operation and perhaps even power-sharing in extra-governmental arenas between government and opposition parties (as suggested by <citeref rid="b3">Dahl 1966</citeref>). Our empirical analysis of party system competitiveness in the electoral, parliamentary and other arenas (in particular, the corporatist arena) between 2000 and 2003 shows that the relations between the government and opposition parties were strictly competitive (i.e. of a zero-sum character) in the electoral arena. Likewise, there was no trading between government and opposition in the parliamentary arena. Finally, the government substantially increased its impact on the official sites (i.e. arenas controlled by the government) and used fire and hire methods more than any of its predecessors to build up its positions in public sector institutions. The opposition parties, in turn, perceived the government parties as a bloc and were united in their goal of undermining the government parties' majority. Yet, while relations between the government and opposition parties remained highly competitive throughout the entire period, relations between the parties on each side of the government-opposition divide became more fluid, partly for tactical considerations and partly for reasons of genuine preferences. In sum, the post-2000 Austrian party system is a weak version of a two-bloc system.     

Madison on the Meaning of the "General Welfare," the "Purpose" of Enumerated Powers, and the "Definition" of Constitutional Government

According to James Madison, "the most important and fundamentalquestion" he ever addressed was the meaning of and relationbetween the general welfare clause and the enumeration of particularpowers. This question is the most "fundamental" because theanswer determines the very "idea" or "nature" of the U.S. Constitution.Commentators virtually agree on the answer Madison proposedand defended in Federalist 41, namely, that the general welfareclause is neither a statement of ends nor a substantive grantof power. It is a mere "synonym" for the enumeration of particularpowers, which are limited and wholly define its content. Fromthis answer, it follows that the primary meaning of the nationaldimension of the federal Constitution is limited government,understood as a government with a limited number of powers ormeans. The thesis of this essay, however, is that, contraryto the commentators' claims, Madison argued that the clausewas a substantive grant of power for the generally stated endand that the primary purpose of the ensuing enumeration wasto define more particularly the ends alluded to by the phrase"general welfare." Hence, the meaning of the general constitutionalgovernment in the American federal system is a government orientedto a limited number of limited ends.     

What Makes a State Advocacy Structure Effective? — Conflicts Between Bureaucratic and Social Movement Criteria

State "advocacy structures"—agencies nominally designated to advance the status of collective social movements in public policy and society—must operate under conflicting criteria for "effectiveness." While government actors likely measure effectiveness as the ability to manage a policyissue—advancing policy influence by prioritizing and packaging demands —collective movements additionally or primarily emphasize structures' performance as representatives of the priorities and diversity of movements. This consequently leads to differing evaluations of agency "effectiveness." A case study of the Ontario Women's Directorate (OWD) analyzes the inherent conflicts and tensions between these two roles, particularly under repeated changes in government. The experiences of the OWD and other advocacy structures suggest that conflicting criteria are inherent and unavoidable in such institutions.     

反思刑法“严打“方针维护社会长治久安

近20年来,全国范围内统一组织开展了3次"严打"运动,社会上对"严打"方式和效果都有不同看法.文章对此进行了全面的分析,认为国家根据社会治安情况,在一个时期对犯罪采取严厉的打击方针是有理论和实践根据的.但是,"严打"必须是一贯性的方针,而不能是临时性的措施;应当在法治范围内进行,而不应该冲破法律的限制;同时,对刑罚的功能也应当有个客观正确的评价,国家不能过分依赖刑罚治理社会.