Imperial Power In The Han Dynasty And Local Governance

As the first imperial dynasty in Chinese history,the Han Dynasty inherited the Qin Dynasty and later the Wei and Jin Dynasties.Its experience in the local governance of a huge empire and the practice of institutional politics have an indelible influence on the imperial era of nearly 2000 years after the Han Dynasty.After the abolition of Zhou Dynasty’s enfeoffment system,how to deal with the new relationship between the central government and the local government was a difficult problem that later dynasties had to face.Qin Dynasty set up the system of emperor and county,expecting to bring the vast territory and the huge number of people into the framework of an empire to some extent.However,there are structural contradictions between the core of imperial power and the local governance of the huge empire.The exclusive and exclusive requirements of imperial power for the emperor’s power make all the power of the huge empire concentrated on one person.The territory,population and local differences of a country all put forward different requirements for the governance ability and means of the rulers.The division of administrative levels and the number of administrative officials are closely related to the stability of the ruling group.The reality of the distant sky and highland makes it impossible for the influence scope of the imperial power to touch all aspects of the Empire.The rulers of the Empire need to seek a delicate balance between the centralization of the imperial power,the stability of the ruling group and the maintenance of the group’s governance ability,so the emergence of the new supervision system is natural.In the contradiction between the supremacy of imperial power and the local governance of the Empire,a reasonable supervision system can maintain the balance of the relationship between the central government and the local government as much as possible.In the early Han Dynasty,after learning from the Qin Dynasty and weighing the political situation,the rulers established a series of local supervision systems,temporarily realizing the unity of centralized control and effective local governance.But after the establishment of the feudal provincial system,the inherent drawbacks of the imperial power order make the political situation chaotic,the actual control of the imperial power weakened,and the rise of local forces,the alienation of the supervision system has become a historical necessity.From therepetition of the feudal provincial system and the governor system at the end of the Western Han Dynasty to the feudal provincial system at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty holding the local military and political power,the supervision system of the Han empire lost the effectiveness of supervision when the imperial power declined and the relationship between the central government and the local government was out of control.In the framework of imperial power and the relationship between the central government and the local government,we can see that every change of the supervisory system in the system level is the change of the political structure and the relationship between the central government and the local government.The contradiction between the imperial power and the local governance of the huge empire also doomed that the supervision system of the Han Dynasty could not continue in its original appearance.From the perspective of group integration,it is difficult for the imperial centralization to surpass its historical limitations and produce continuous and effective integration elements.The institutional attribute of local supervision system is also difficult to provide internal centripetal force for group integration.Neither the imperial political structure nor the means of supervision and control can complete the integration of the Empire.Finally,through the discussion of the three elements of local governance as group integration and the limitation of time and space of local governance,on the basis of absorbing the experience of Han Dynasty imperial power in local governance practice,we can know that the key to local governance is to face up to the non independence of system practice,to break the narrative of central local dual opposition.The relationship between central government and local government based on group rationality and trust is the reason why local governance as group integration can continue to exist.