China's Township System: Governance and Reform by Licai Wu

Author:Licai Wu [Wu, Licai]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, World, Asian
ISBN: 9789814675529
Google: hgFwrgEACAAJ
Goodreads: 29067805
Publisher: World Scientific
Published: 2017-10-31T00:00:00+00:00

9.2.2Institutional constraint

Institutional constraint is the most fundamental restrictive factor of township reform. As Zhao Shukai said, “Although people have realized there should be transformation for (township) government on the concept. However, basic operating mechanism of the government has not yet transformed. From target of the operation of the government, pursuit of GDP and the pursuit of fiscal revenue are still in dominant positions. However, there is still no true institutional guarantee for performance of responsibilities of public service. From mechanism of the operation of the government, it is still motion feature based on administrative coercion. It is still mobilized operation of government.... For factors which determine operation mode of the government, there are not only factors of administrative structure but also factors of government structure. That is to say, to construct public service-oriented government, we need joint reform of both the administrative level and political level reform, not just the increase or decrease of personnel and institutions”.20 Although China has comprehensively abolished the agricultural tax and many places of country have implemented corresponding supplementary reforms for township institutions and rural fundamental financial system at the same time, accountability system and mechanism of examination and evaluation of township government have not been fundamentally transformed, and so constructing service-oriented township government mostly stays at the level of policies and ideas.

In fact, real operating mechanism (or operating mode) of the township government depends on the rational choice of town leaders. The rational choice of town leaders is based on the existing various institutional arrangements (especially financial and personnel system and relevant examination mechanism) between the counties and townships. It is these institutional arrangements that form the power structure of domination — being dominated between the counties and townships. Real operating of township government is the result of (motility) response to the existing institutional structure. Meanwhile, the real operating itself also reacts to the existing systems and makes actual operation of township government keep a kind of “inertia effect”. Therefore, this system structure is “created” again. This “habit” is based on the certain “structure” (or “field”) that blocks the transformation of functions of township government so as to create a constraint on township reform.

Second, management system of “departments and regions” among counties also constitute a kind of constraint on township reform. “In the reform of township institutions, in principle, subordinates can autonomously set up institutions. However, there will be documents which require keeping some institutions or even strengthening some institutions. Superior government departments control the resources. The rules of the allocation of resources are not clear. Fundamental government must always go to the superior government. Sometimes, the fact of whether there are corresponding subordinate institutions becomes an important standard for giving money or not. Under such circumstances, if the superior requires subordinates to reform, not only the reform effect will be very poor, but also the more it reforms, the less trust there will be between superior and subordinate governments”.21 In addition to the problems of corresponding setting of superior and subordinate departments, some

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