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Institution And Technology: An Empirical Study Of The Construction Of Governments To Serve

Posted on:2012-11-11Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:Z R ShenFull Text:PDF
GTID:1226330368491374Subject:Political Theory
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
Construction of a government to serve is among the major tasks for modern governing with changes in governmental functions and adaptive ways of administration being the vital part of a government to serve. To serve this purpose most quickly, a government must change its present system of administration, of which the most important and the most necessary part is the reform of the past administrative system of examining and approving. The establishment of the Administration and Service Center has been an answer to such a call for reform and for better serving the public, whose value shows itself in the way of having a break in the administrative reform drive. However, the Administration and Service Center is meeting with much trouble since the reform is not being performed in the context of a more large-scale and more systematic manner.Most present researches have centered upon the Administration and Service Center itself, ie. the reflection of the problems involved and the subsequent measures taken. Such a research method, though able to solve some simple ones, is not adequate for those tough problems buried deep down. For instance, how far and where should the institution go? How is it related to the on-going reform in governmental function and in institutional management, in particular? There are other researchers attempting to focus on the issue from the perspective of neo-institutional economics. Unfortunately, research efforts using such a tool and the following findings are few and unimpressive. Therefore, the thesis attempts to make use of this theory and other theories about changes in governmental system and the techniques involved to find out the reasons behind the establishment and development of the Administration and Service Center, to explore the existent problems and the root cause for its slowed-down development. The purpose of this research is to offer suggestions on corresponding institutional arrangements, to examine how far and where the institution is to go so that a probably better and sound theoretical foundation can be found for further research into a government to serve.The writer had a survey of the operation and efficiency of the Administration and Service Centers of Kunming, Liuzhou, Suzhou, Wuhou District of Chengdu, and then conducted a series of positive analysis of them. It was found that institutional arrangement could be the major cause of the unsmooth operation of such centers in general.Administration and Service Centers are the result of the effort of the local governments in their drive to achieve“other-directed institutional change”. Local governments, as one of the main interest groups of the market, have experienced difficulties and stress in institutional changes in their endeavor to achieve“supply-typed institutional changes”and“inducement-typed institutional changes”. They therefore initiated a form of administration, ie. administrative mechanism through examining and approving to render them in the better place in the game of market interests, and thus the emergence of Administration and Service Centers since the institution has brought the local governments both economical and political interests. However, this initiation only tries to find a“shady area”in the national administrative system, and is, after all, a temporary institutional change with some flexibility, and therefore flawed, unsystematic, and problematic in its operation and development. Here, in this thesis, tentative solutions are provided for better developing the Administration and Service Centers.In fact, forces that drive the institutional changes could also be the result of technical innovation since changes in techniques are among the chief causes of institutional changes. In this sense, the building of Administration and Service Centers not only means the reproduction of governmental administration procedures but also the main part of electronic administrative affairs. Undoubtedly techniques characterized by the use of information technology, the use of such organizational skills as“one-stop”,“‘once-for-all’responsibility”, the reproduction of examining and approving procedures, as well as the use of such administrative skills as position placement, simultaneous supervision, has brought with them many opportunities. Optimized techniques are of great value to truly reform the present system of administrative examining and approving procedures because (1) institutional innovation brought by information technology has resulted in a one-dimensional structure brought about by one-dimensional information management; (2) functional changes have been arrived at in governments as a result of integration of volumes of information; (3) examining and approving procedures have been made more standardized and legalized because of computer-assisted automatic controlling and limitation of the procedures. Still, there are gaps to fill between good techniques and non-matching values of a government to serve, and hence greater emphasis needs to be placed on better values and demands for a government to serve.Right now, the key to further institutional reform at Administration and Service Centers is detecting more room for improvement, reshaping the present procedures, reflecting upon the values, and completing their functional changes. So, the vital part of the reform consists in taking greater advantage of the already-attained initial good results in the reformation of the present examining and approving procedures to bring about firmly-established institutional arrangements at Administration and Service Centers instead of just temporary and deviated ones. Sure, a more stable“long-term balanced”center is preferable to a“short-term balanced”one wanting carefully maintaining. Hopefully, breakthroughs will be achieved about reforms of the present administrative system after the above-mentioned problems are solved.
Keywords/Search Tags:Construction of Governments, Functional Changes Administration and Service, Centers, Institutional Changes, Technical Changes
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