制度能力与治理绩效——以上海社区为例

本文考察了社区治理绩效的影响因素.通过对上海45个小区调查数据的统计分析,文章发现居委会的制度能力与社区治理绩效之间存在显著的关系.居委会动员社区外资源的能力有助于提高其服务效率、居委会直选投票率,居委会与物业之间的合作关系也有助于提高直选投票率.该研究发现意味着,随着住房市场化和封闭式小区的出现,传统的基于楼组长动员网络的社区治理技术面临挑战,居委会有必要采取新的社区治理实践和技术来强化其制度能力的建设,从而更好地服务、管理社区.本文将制度能力作为一种分析工具引入城市社区治理的研究,丰富了社区治理研究的理论视角.同时,本文认为今后的研究需要进一步完善居委会制度能力的测量指标,并进一步阐明制度能力影响治理绩效的作用机制.

Institutional Capacity and Governance Performance Evidence from Neighbourhoods in Shanghai

The objective of this paper is to examine the contributory factors of governance performance in urban neighbourhoods.A survey study,involving 45 neighbourhoods in Shanghai,was conducted.The analysis shows that institutional capacities of residents’ committees,in terms of obtaining resources from external organizations and building cooperative relationship with property management companies,have a significant positive effect on the performance of neighbourhood governance,with a minor exception that the coefficient of cooperative relationship with property management companies is negative but insignificant in the model of residents’ perceived satisfaction with residents’ committees.The measurement of institutional capacity is not comprehensive.The mechanisms through which institutional capacities influence governance performance have not been explored in details.The significant positive impact of institutional capacity on governance performance suggests that with the privatization and marketization of housing and the rise of gated communities,conventional neighbourhood governance practices face challenges such as relying on local networks of activists,which call for new governance strategies such as getting more external resources to improve community service provision or building cooperative relationships with property management companies.Existing literature considers community power and within-neighbourhood mobilization to be the most important determinant of governance performance.From the urban governance perspective,the authors introduce institutional capacity as an analytical tool to examine the effects of the capacities of residents’ committees to cooperate with other neighbourhood institutions on its governance performance.Article Type: Research paper