Governance Theory And Its Applicability In China

With the emergence of governance theory, the term of governance became a popular word around the study of international social sciences, particularly in the domain of Public Administration. The concept of governance no longer believes in single strong state on one hand, and it abandons the idea of single liberal market on the other hand, therefore possessing greater explanatory ability while it goes byond the abstract opposition of statism and neo-liberalism. However, the applications and development of governance theory constrained by vagueness of key concept and jumble of its different streams. Clarifying the concept thus became essential for the further discussion of governance theory. Or, it is critically important to outline its logics, assess its theoretical contributions, limits and petential development by rethinking the governance theory in the context of Public Administration. In addition, governance theory was mostly based on western experiences; there may be tensions between western paradigm and Chinese practices when the theory is applied in China. Inspecting the applicability of governance theory in China and extending it in accordance with Chinese reality will be beneficial to the development of the theory, as well as the autonomy of Chinese social science.The elements of governance can be concluded as following:compared with government, governance indicates a new trend which means adjustment of the relationship between state(government) and society to deal with the ungovernability in the public administration. In this trend, actors and forces beyond state were highly emphasized; the central role of state was replaced, to some extent, by patterns of combination of state, market and society. There is no certain pattern of governance practice because of different institutions, traditions and features of ungovernability in different countries. Claims such as polycentricity, decentralization and citizen participation etc. all imply that governance theory has the significant society centric inclination while the concept of meta-governance contends the back of state to the center. In the concept of meta-governance, the state not only has an important role in the governance process but it is also the only actor which can take the responsibility of governance failure. "Rolling back of the state" and "rolling back to the state" seems to constitute a contradiction; but this shows either a nonobjective society centric approach or an absolute state centric approach is impossible.Governance theory offers paarticular ideas on the patterns of democracy and the democratic administration. It declines the possibility of "one best" democratic model; instead, it pursues feasible participatory democracy and tries to find a better way to combine representative democracy model and participatory democracy model. Futher more, it is governance theory brings democracy theory and public administration together again since the establishment of the orthodox political-administrative dichotomy principal and the administrative state. Governance emphasizes the decision making function of democracy institutions; thus policy making is no longer the patent of legislators and bureaucrats, all of which refreshed the concept of democracy and provide a theoretical foundation for the democratic administration.Governance theory criticized the classical theory of public administration, the New Public Administration and the New Public Management and showed an ambitious to surpass the existing paradigm of public administration. Although, according to the paradigm theory of Kuhn, it does not conceivably constitute a new paradigm yet. Nevertheless, a series of key propositions of governance theory, did bridge the distinctions between the value rationality and the instrumental rationality in public administration. Indeed, governance theory and related initiatives in practice which emphasized the integrating of efficiency calculation and democracy (value) consideration greatly promote the development of modern Public Administration. And various empirical studies on governance demonstrate that democracy value and efficiency could be achieved simultaneously through similar method which testified the validity of the concept of "social efficiency". However, there are some clues implied that governance theory is going towards pragmatism. It is necessary for the governance theory to renovate itself so as to finally turn into a new paradigm of public administration in the future.Developing countries such as China also confronted challenges from ungovernability as its counterparts in West. In the academic arena, "absence of a mature civil society" and the "unfinished process of modern state-building" are two main criticisms when using governance theory in China. In terms of Jessop's "strategic-relational" approach, we can find that although civil society organizations only enjoys "embedded autonomy" in current China, they are already constituting a dynamic force outside of the state system in the governance process. The fragmentization of China's political and administrative regimes and the marketilization process in China offered substantial spaces for citizen participation. Particularly, local governments who own certain autonomy and heavy responsibilities in public service delivery are willing to adapt new instruments in public service area and to cooperate with new social actors. These environmental changes provide possibility of governance in China, and three cases at local level offered key evidence on the applicability of governance theory in China. However, it should be recognized that the applicability of governance theory in China is bounded. It is true that governance can play an active role in promoting local or sectoral level public affairs management and it can also improve the patterns of public administration in local government; but it can probably not bring forth the "political progress" significantly in China, nor overwhelmingly upgrade the general level of China's public administration. Nevertheless, the positive effect of governance for the realization of good governance is still worth to be expected. The experience of China demonstrates whether it is possible and how for the governance framework existing in a non-western context and what function it could be. In additional, China's experiences also shed lights on the new research approach of governance in non-Western context.