What is grass-roots government? -Seven research institutes and four offices.

After the East Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s, people began to examine the issue of "developmental government" in East Asia. Some scholars have suggested that the developmental government is only a "transitional stage". Based on the observation and research of grass-roots governments in China, the author thinks that local governments in China can be classified as developmental governments, but they are different from local governments in general countries in East Asia. The important difference is that in the process of pursuing economic development, the corporatization characteristics of local governments in China are more profound and prominent. Therefore, we put forward the concept of "corporatization of grass-roots government".

"Corporatization of grass-roots government" is not only the concept of government leadership, but more importantly, it is an organic government operation system and mechanism. The core problem of this system is the low degree of institutionalization of the government itself, or the degree of institutionalization is not enough. The crux of the lack of institutionalization lies in three aspects, namely, the operating logic of corporatization, the working mechanism of sports and the fragmented authoritative structure. To put it simply, the grass-roots government has three unsolved problems: what to do, how to do things, and how to control itself. Some achievements of local development can be explained from this; Some mistakes in local development can also be explained.

Some foreign scholars put forward that the development-oriented government is not a sustainable process, but a transitional form that can be chosen in the short process from "underdeveloped" to "developed". After a period of development, it is facing unsustainable problems. Some scholars believe that a developmental government must be transformed into a regulatory government, and Japan is a successful case of transformation. Then, in China, does the way the government deeply participates in economic development also need to be changed? I don't think the mayor's suggestion. 1 2 in 2006 means that the problems in the past development have fully emerged, and the government transformation must begin. This paper attempts to describe these problems and characteristics of grass-roots government in China, so as to find the direction and signpost of reform.

First, the logic of enterprise government operation

Under the market economy system, the function of the government is to provide public goods and services. However, in areas where attracting investment is the top priority, the government has confused with a company that operates industrial parks, and local governments that overemphasize economic development have been corporatized. The words of some local government leaders are full of declarations and commitments such as "land is cheap", "tax incentives" and "labor is cheap". Foreign investors become the most distinguished guests of the government, while the demands of the public are ignored. When industrial and commercial enterprises conflict with local people, some local governments often violate the law to protect industrial and commercial enterprises. These local governments regard increasing investment as the main means to stimulate economic growth, regional GDP as their "turnover" and local fiscal revenue as "profit". In some places, on both sides of the expressway, we can find large slogans such as "whoever is difficult to attract investment will be difficult for the people of the county". The government's support for business operation can undoubtedly promote the development of industry and commerce, but some local governments have turned themselves into the main body of market competition and done many things that should be done by the market. Some government officials mainly focus on investors or the rich, or the policy orientation is more inclined to the rich. Excessive involvement of public power in market operation confuses the boundaries between politics and business, which is not conducive to the establishment of a fair market economic environment.

This corporatized government operation mechanism makes the government lack the ability to respond to the public needs of grassroots society. First of all, in the process of government operation, it is difficult for people's needs and demands to be quickly fed back to the government system. In other words, the ways of feedback are mainly unconventional, such as petitions and mass incidents. However, those designed institutionalized channels did not work well, or were abandoned or blocked. Secondly, after the information feedback came up, the government's handling mechanism was not perfect. From the perspective of government workers, there is no incentive mechanism to do things for the people and no motivation to respond to relevant information. This shows that government reform has lagged behind economic and social development.

There are two main reasons why corporatization has become the basic logic of government operation. The first is the top-down institutional requirements for the whole government system. One-sided understanding of development and pressure design of development indicators have become the public banner of government corporatization. Although "scientific development" has become an important concept and call, regional GDP and fiscal revenue are still the core standards in top-down government performance appraisal. Secondly, the local government's own interest incentives. In the practice of government management, government interests exist objectively. Governments at all levels have their own interests, and different departments also have their own interests. The personal interests of government officials are also an important factor. The misconduct of grass-roots governments is not only related to the vicious expansion of their own interests, but also related to the misconduct of higher-level governments. Therefore, the institutional pressure generated by the whole government system and the endogenous interest pursuit of local government subjects are wonderfully closely combined and become the basic driving force of government operation.

The second is the operation of the government working mechanism.

The important feature of government operation is "movement", but this movement is not a "social movement" automatically generated by civil society forces, but a "government movement" promoted by the government through administrative forces. Judging from the content of the government movement, it is mainly in the economic field, such as early "running township enterprises", "developing small towns", "agricultural industrialization" and "developing labor economy". There are also social fields, such as "reaching the standard of universal nine-year compulsory education" and "reaching the standard of family planning"; There are also political fields, such as "open government affairs" and large-scale political learning activities. From the level of government movements, there are national movements, local movements and grassroots movements. There are provincial sports in the province, county sports in the county, and towns can also have their own sports, such as the "creation of civilized villages" in the province and the "revitalization of hundreds of villages" in the county. These sports with different names and scales are basically the same, while other sports have their own charms, and some sports actually sing their own tunes. Judging from the process of these government actions, it is basically the leaders who ask for deployment and start, and check and evaluate to open the way. When the propaganda was launched, it was vigorous, and when it was checked and accepted, it was mighty. In this process, there will be some patterns at all levels. The early model may have appeared on its own, and the later model, especially the model that leaders personally grasped, was basically created by governments at all levels. The result of exercise is basically superficial happiness. All in all, the results are numerous and very successful. The leader at the higher level did a good job, while the leader at the lower level did a good job. However, in practical work, formalism has become a common practice, and the use of "documents to implement documents" and "meetings to implement meetings" or forced orders has caused various sequelae. For example, a considerable part of the huge rural debt is the "fruitful result" of these movements.

It is found that the work of grass-roots governments is basically carried out in these movements, while the routine work is very low. In towns and villages, the most commonly used term is "central work", while the routine work of various departments is "business work". Center work is actually a "movement", and "business work" should be subordinate to "center work". There are quite a few cadres, although they are in the business department, but in fact they have been dealing with various "central tasks" for many years. It can be said that the grass-roots government has not learned to work step by step. Taking sports as the basic form of government work, we call this kind of government operation "sports government". This system has strong mobilization ability, and can do some things that can't be done by routine, but it also has great negative effects. It can be said that the working mechanism of sports government is unsustainable.

The "sports government" proposed in this paper has something in common with the "mobilized government" in its operation mode. According to the research of foreign scholars, the main feature of "mobilized government" is that the state monopolizes all mobilization resources and all political organizations, and only the state can mobilize its citizens. The characteristic of "mobilized government" is centralization, which is manifested in the dual combination of organizational centralization and individual centralization. The local government system in China has this feature in many aspects, and so does the township government. The operating mechanism of "sports" government is manifested in the concrete process of top-down pressure transmission. This pressure transfer process was once explained by domestic scholars with "pressure system". The pressure system is a quantitative task decomposition management method and a substantive evaluation system adopted by the first-level political organizations (counties and townships) to achieve economic catch-up and complete the indicators issued by their superiors. It is found that the operating mechanism of "sports government" has more profound internal structural characteristics. First, administrative shock. In the government's "movement" operation, there is a vibration phenomenon similar to that in physics, and there is a consistent strong reaction between the upper and lower governments in form and momentum. For example, although the actual effect of some government arrangements is not good, even the lower-level governments lack recognition, they are ostensibly implementing and formally expressing recognition, but when reporting, they say that the results are remarkable. Some grassroots leaders said: "Isn't the reason why the superiors launched this movement just to let the subordinates say yes?" Then we will say it. " Second, the dynamic separation of responsibility and power. This dynamic separation of responsibilities and rights is mainly manifested in several pairs of relationships: between superior and subordinate leaders, the superior exercises power and the subordinate assumes responsibility; Between the party and government leaders, the party and government leaders exercise power and the administrative leaders assume responsibility; Between the former leader and the latter leader, the former leader exercises power and the latter takes responsibility. For example, the current formation process of township debt is formed by the typical mechanism of "paying off debts after spending money". Third, the government system is closed. As far as the original intention is concerned, these government "movements" are intended to mobilize or influence the whole society; However, due to its operation, it has become a "game" within the government system, and its impact on society is very limited. In other words, many goals are to mobilize and influence the peasant movement, but in fact, there is no response from the peasants, and even the peasants do not pay attention to it, which has become the "vernacular" of the government. Although these movements are weak in mobilizing society, they are still strong in mobilizing the government itself and can be "colorful" within the government. As far as its roots are concerned, this is caused by centralization within the government. The prominent centralization of power by superiors and leaders in grass-roots governments is the key to the success of these "movements"

Third, the decentralized government power system.

Fragmentation seems to be a phenomenon that conflicts with sports, but it is an important feature in the operation of some local governments. To be precise, it should be a formal movement and a substantive separation. As far as its specific performance is concerned, there are mainly: the first is the fragmentation of "value", and the obedience of subordinates to superiors is often only symbolic. For the deployment spirit of the superiors, the subordinates often disagree ideologically, but only show superficial approval or obedience. The second is the fragmentation of the "system". Between different levels of government and different government departments, the deployment of superiors is carried out according to their respective needs. Therefore, we can see that grass-roots leaders say what their superiors say and what their subordinates say, but after the speech, they often disappear; Many policy documents, whether written by superiors or subordinates, are forwarded layer by layer. When they are forwarded, they are often solved. However, different levels and departments have their own demands and expressions. Therefore, there are many "battles" for documents, and the personnel who execute the documents "fight". In this way, the seemingly responsive government system actually contains internal differences.

"Fragmented authority" was put forward by American political scientists Li Kan Ruhe and Olsenberg in the book "Government Decision in China", which is mainly based on the investigation of China's decision-making process in the 1980s, especially the policy process in the energy field. In their view, the main reason for the fragmentation of authoritative politics is that China's politics is too dominated by people and not institutionalized, which is aggravated by the decentralization of decision-making power in the reform process. Its main feature is that countries with decentralized hierarchical structure form a process of negotiating policies in a centrifugal bureaucracy. Such a policy process is disjointed and gradual. There are four main reasons for this situation: first, the ideological dilution. As a kind of enjoyment value that can promote policy formulation and implementation, officials can no longer maintain their loyalty and obedience to their superiors. Different departments began to form their own departmental values and departmental culture. The second is the change of political structure. Departments naturally have a division of labor, and decentralization in the reform has led to the decentralized distribution of authority and resources. In particular, the policy of fiscal decentralization and allowing departments to generate their own income to make up for the financial shortage enables all departments to make economic decisions. Local governments have a strong impulse to seek local interests, and departments have the motivation to seek their own interests, that is, extra-budgetary income. Bureaucrats have the power, motivation and resources to pursue their own policy preferences and safeguard their own interests, and their loyalty to superior policies has also declined. The third is the analysis of the process of policy formulation and implementation. This level of analysis involves the alliance within the bureaucracy, the values of policy participants, the structural distribution of power and resources, and the incentive mechanism. The fourth is the control of information. Information distortion is also an important reason for information flow between superiors and subordinates and peers, and subordinates can selectively provide information to superiors.

Investigating the actual operation process of local governments at present, fragmentation has become an increasingly prominent problem. The important mechanism of government operation is "personal operation" led by informal rules, or the operation of government departments has been rooted in the interpersonal relationship structure within the government. Although there are clear principles for government approval and permission, in fact, in terms of work arrangement, project approval, fund allocation, etc., the success or failure of things mainly depends on personal contacts within the government, or "relationships" are the personal social capital of officials. Under the influence of "relationship", the work interaction of government departments, especially subordinate units, is privatized, and official business can only be done as a private matter; However, in order to maintain a good relationship with important departments at higher levels, private affairs should be treated as official business. There is a strong personal bargaining between similar leaders, officials at the same level and direct superiors and subordinates. Bargaining has become an important way for government departments to work, not only in the process of policy formulation, but also in the process of policy implementation. If different policies are not related to each other, government power is often used for personal gain, and many personal interests are between legal and illegal. In the process of such government operation, formal institutional norms often become a decoration, and it is difficult to establish an effective legal framework and form the same values and recognized procedures. These problems are actually the characteristics of the traditional government model and need to be transformed into an institutionalized modern government model.

From this perspective, this fragmented government system is not a modern bureaucratic system. The fundamental reason lies in the decentralization of the budget system. The ongoing budget reform, such as departmental budget, two lines of revenue and expenditure, centralized payment by the state treasury, etc. It mainly focuses on the redistribution of power within the government, which can only solve the problem of bureaucratic system itself, but can not solve the problem of people's participation, so it may lead to the problem of insufficient motivation for reform. Even so, the actual effect of these reforms at the grassroots level is very weak. In the higher-level government, the democratization and participation of the budget process itself have not been solved, which has also strengthened the power of individual real power departments to a certain extent, making the personal relationship problem in the allocation of budget resources more prominent. Within the local government, there is a lack of unified management and coordination among institutions. Almost every organization has its own budget or budget pursuit, and many government projects must be screened by these departments. In the implementation of different levels, the loss of resources and efficiency is constantly enlarged, and the policy is constantly deformed.

As the fifty-first article of the Federalist Collection says: "The biggest difficulty in organizing a government that rules the people by one person is that the government must first manage the ruled, and then the government must manage itself." The great challenge brought by the fragmentation of government authority system is that it is difficult for the government to control itself. The study of comparative politics shows that the democratization and institutionalization of the government can be combined or separated. For the grass-roots government in China, democratization and institutionalization are being promoted at the same time in theory, but the foundation of democratization is not solid, and the process of institutionalization is particularly immature and lagging behind. To solve these problems of grass-roots government, it is particularly urgent for the government to effectively control itself and promote system construction. The most important way out is to introduce democratic participation and let the people strengthen their effective control over the government. At present, although the level of economic modernization in China has jumped rapidly, the difficult government transformation has just started.