Assessment Of Local Government Capacity

Under the background of fact that the market mechanism is perfected further after the economic globalization and accession to the WTO of China, because the flowing freely trans-regionally even trans-nationally of resources, such as technology, talent, capital, and information, etc., the local government is being involved in the fiercer and fiercer area, the whole country and even worldwide inter-governmental competition. As the view of Porter, the foundation of international competition is area competition, while local governments have their important rule in competition. The inter-governmental competition is embodied in competition of local social and economic development performance, and in competition of rare resources, such as technology, talent, capital, information etc. The inside decisive factor of key of inter-governmental competition is government capacity, because capability is the key of obtaining and maintaining competition advantage. So the inter-governmental competition is a competition of government capacity after all. World Bank also emphasized the importance of government capacity building in World Development Report in 1997: Government in Changing World. All in all, the research of government capacity and capacity measurement should be the important part of state competition theory and government strategic management studies.Based on resource-based view and dynamic capability theory, this paper reviewed the lectures about government capacity and government capacity measurement, and found the unique mode of forming and deploying government capacity of our country. Then, we developed a model of local government capacity. According to the new framework of government capacity-analysis, this paper also developed an index system for measuring local government capacity. Combining "hard indicators" based on statistics with "soft indicators" based on questionnaire investigation, this paper use AHP method of system engineer theory to evaluate and compare the government capacity of 11 cities of Zhejiang Province. Finally, according to the findings of government capacity measurement, this paper put forward some policy suggestions to local government capacity building and government strategic management based on capacity.