Non-governmental Organization And Urban Public Management And Administration In Modern Times

The public communes in Suzhou were block-based non-governmental organizations during the late Qing dynasty and the early Republic period. During that period, various factors such as continuous wars, frequent natural disasters, and transfers of central and local governments made the public environment of Suzhou City progressively deteriorate. Under such circumstances, to maintain public order and improve public environment, the public communes in Suzhou had been involved in the urban public management and administration actively. Considering its limitations in management system, especially lack of functions in public affairs, and under the big background that the central government advocated local autonomy, the local government of Suzhou transferred some power to the citizens, which created favorable conditions for the public communes in Suzhou to participate in the management of public affairs. Meanwhile, the maturity of businessman community as the main part of the public communes, embodying the increase of economic power, improvement of the social status and the strengthening of sense of social responsibility, etc. provided preferable social foundation for public communes'management over the urban public affairs.Public administration of public communes was extremely rich in content, which could be roughly divided into public health management, public safety management, public transport management and social security management, each of which consists of various contents. As non-governmental organization, the management system of public communes'intervention into the public affairs was characterized mainly by the establishment and improvement of internal control mechanism and external network mechanism. The former embodied the relatively developed procedures of policy-making, implementation and supervision, while the latter consisted of government agencies and non-governmental organizations, such as some social groups like general chamber of commerce and merchant groups, and the non-governmental organizations were the core element.Based on democratic management system and the multilayered management, in the management of urban public affairs the public communes put all the heads together, gave better rein to citizens'enthusiasm and creativity in the management of public affairs, and showed features of being moderate, flexible and highly efficient. The citizens'intervention not only made up for some missing functions of the government but also promoted the improvement of government's way of managing public affairs. Meanwhile it played a positive role in changing the appearance of the city, dissolving the social conflicts, strengthening public order and promoting citizens'capacity of self-government.Currently with the deepening of the reform of government organizations, there is a greater space for the non-governmental organizations to participate in the management of public affairs. This research of this thesis is of certain reference value to how to treat the relationship between government and non-governmental organizations fairly so as to establish good bilateral cooperation and how to strengthen the non-governmental organizations themselves.