Deficiency And Re-construction: Study Of The Government Capacity In The Course Of Modernization

Government capacity means the potential and operational abilities a government possesses. Essentially it refers to the influence of the resources government has on social organizations .such as market, enterprises and other behavior bodies in Government process. Government capacity plays a greatly important role in Government process. It is the foundation of governmental activities, which presupposes and ensures government's effectiveness. In course of modernization, government capacity includes abilities of making policy, establishing institution, social integration, social service and self-discipline, and it provides policy precondition, institutional assurance, social foundation, basic condition and political guarantee for modernization through its influence upon governmental policy-making innovation, institution supply, social integration, social service and government's self-discipline. Therefore, government capacity affects and determines the time of starting modernization, its progress and degree of its realization. Thus it is necessary for all modernized countries to study government capacity and to search the ways to improving government capacity.Guided by Marxism, especially Marxist's theories of nation and society and of government, this paper offers a research on the development of government capacity, the government capacity's relationships with government function and the government capacity's relationships with modernization, and the building-up of government capacity on the basis of numerous developing countries' and China's modernization experience from the angle of new recognition of government capacity's formation, growing, and its structural changes. This paper points out that the key to a minority of developing countries' success of modernization after WWII is the improvement of government capacity, whereas the root reason for frustration most developing countries have suffered is the deficiency of government capacity, and maintains the only way out from the dilemma of modernization for these countries is to re-construct government capacity. The paper subsequently sums up both the positive and negative experience of China's modernization, and initials some practical paths to improve the Chinese government capacity.This paper contains five parts, which are the implication of government capacity, its structure and characteristics, government capacity and government function, deficiency of government capacity in course of modernization, re-construction of government capacity in the course of modernization and government capacity with the development of Chinese modernization.The first part mainly focuses on the implication, structure and characteristics of government capacity. Through the analysis of the government's feature, the relationship between government capacity and its function, and behavioral characteristics, this paper re-defines government capacity, regarding it as influence over social organizations, such as market, enterprises and other behavior bodies in Governmental process on the basis of the resources it has, expounds the composure of government capacity and its structural features. The paper then initials the concept of "government capacity development", referring to it as the formation, growing, the course and regularity of changes of government capacity. This part also offers a profound analysis of government capacity's formation, development, and structure changes from theoretical perspective.The second part sets government capacity and government function as its subjects of discussion and covers three issues: an analysis of academic research home and abroad which leads to the conclusion that a profound understanding of government and its work comes only after new historic analysis of government and its work with Marxist's theory of history; a discussion of the relationship between government capacity and its function which leads to the conclusion that government capacity is the base of government action,and the precondition and guarantee of government's effectiveness; government capacity's influence on the course of modernization, and argues that government capacity provides policy precondition, institutional assurance, social foundation, basic condition and political guarantee for modernization through its influence upon governmental policy-making innovation, institution supply, social integration,social service and government's self-discipline. Therefore, government capacity affects and determines the time of starting modernization, its progress and degree of its realization.The third part is the lack of government capacity in the modernization process. This is the demonstration research, by analyzing the basic characteristic and historical process of vast developing countries' modernization since the Second World War, and comparing with modernization put forward more and higher demands for each countries' government capacity, point out the low or lack of these countries' government capacity is the fundamental reason for most developing countries whose modernization suffering from frustration. At last, discuss the represent and causations of the lack of government capacity.The fourth part deals with re-construction of government capacity in course of modernization. Starting from finding out elements, both internal and external, that influence on government capacity, it points out some practical ways for the developing countries to re-construct government capacity in the course of modernization, such as changing old government ideas, old development ideas and old administration ideas to widen boundary of government capacity re-construction, improving social environment, market environment and law environment to create external atmosphere of constructing government capacity, initializing government institution,such as government system,institution of joining political process, governmental financial administration institution, government performance institution,etc to improve internal impetus of constructing government capacity, innovating administration technologies to provide new platform for the construction of government capacity and so on.The last part, the conclusion of the whole thesis, limits its discussion to relationship between government capacity and the development of Chinese modernization. It sums up both the positive and negative experience of China's modernization, analyzes the close connection between government capacity and Chinese modernization, and holds that the frustration of Chinese modernization results from deficiency of government capacity, and that the universally-acknowledged achievements we have made result from improvement of government capacity under the wise leadership of Chinese Communist Party. It finally points out some problems which exist in the development of contemporary Chinese government capacity, and advocates some concrete methods to cope with these problems such as improving the sum of government capacity, optimizing the structure of government capacity, strengthening the control of government capacity's operation and so on.