Study Of Local Governance In The Competition Of China's Local Governments

With the progressing of the decentralized and market-oriented reform, the local government's main behavior target has turned to running after economic development and prosperity within its administration area. For the resources needed are always sparse and mobile, it is difficult for local governments to avoid mutual competition in the course of pursuing the similar target. Meanwhile, the local governance has been added to the schedule as a very important issue: the local government obtains bigger managing powers and begins to make behavior patterns of its own; the multivariate interest groups gradually take form along with the market-oriented various seeping into the society. In China, the local government competition and local governance have the same system platform background. The dissertation concerns on such issues: What kind of competition behavior and tactics the local government would adopt under the competition pressure? What is the impact of those competition behavior and tactics on local governance? Does local government competition improve local governance?The dissertation tends to use institution analysis method to study the development of local governance under local government competition. As a rational behavior body, the local government generally chooses tactics and behavior that could be most beneficial to its own interest within the space that the system environment allows. The tactics and behavior has both positive and negative impaction on the local governance.The local government's positive competition behavior concentrates on the institutional innovation. Under the competition pressure, the local government plays as a "politics entrepreneur" and carries out institutional innovations such as property system reformation, administrative approval system reformation, local supplies system reformation. These institutional innovations have pushed forward the market-oriented course and driven the cooperation among the local governments, marketplace and citizen society, improved the capability and technical means of local government, and promoted the local citizen participation. These are all the positive results on development of the local governance.But current institutional defects and impropriety such as unsystematization and instability in administration decentralization, excessive emphasis on economical achievements in political check-up system, and lackage of competition restraint institution have driven and fostered negative behavior such as redundant building, the regional protectionism and vicious competition. These negative behaviors have brought ineffectiveness in local government competition. Ineffectiveness in local government competition produced extremely great negative effect on local governance. Firstly, the local government has no way to fairly fulfill governing function; Secondly, structure imbalance in local governance is being aggravated; Thirdly, the market system's development as the basis of local governance is infringed. These negative effects are exactly the results of ineffectiveness in local governance.The local government competition has both positive and negative impaction on the local governance. Removing the local government competition is impossible. What we need is not how to remove local government competition, but how to standardize local government competition order. We should explore the approach of restructuring local government competition order on the basis of the institutional reasons that cause ineffectiveness in local government competition. Such as rebuilding the systematic decentralization between the central authority and the local government, reforming political check-up system, strengthening restraint institution for local government competition and so on. The process of restructuring the local government competition order is intrincically to adjust and mould the relations between the central authority and the local government, the relations among the local government, the market, the society and the public, so as to promote the development of the local governance and especially the change of local government's function.