The Meta-evaluation On Thousands Of People Evaluating Government Performance

Since 1990 s,"Thousands of People Evaluating Government Performance" has been the most popular and significant government performance evaluation mode.While "Thousands of People Evaluating Government Performance" has received national acclaim,the opposite opinions never stopped.Some scholars claim that the "bottomtop" approach which the mode adopts sets a precedent for China’s local government performance evaluation,and is a necessary supplement to traditional "top-bottom" approach;while some other scholars argue that the mode doesn’t break the limit of traditional government management procedure and institution,instead,it strengthens the advantage of traditional bureaucracy,and the citizens’ influence on government management hasn’t been changed.Facing the mixed opinions,the question is how effective the mode is.This study will conduct discussion centering on the question.This paper aims to conduct a meta-evaluation on "Thousands of People Evaluating Government Performance" based on the theory of meta-evaluation.As the metaevaluation requires data of high quality,it selected "Hangzhou Social Evaluation" as a case to conduct the meta-evaluation based on the principles,such as the popularity of the evaluation mode,the sustainability of the evaluation mode,and the openness of the performance data,so as to test the effectiveness and problems of the "Thousands of People Evaluating Government Performance" mode,and public servants’ cognitive differences in its effectiveness.Chapter 3,4 and 5 are the main parts of the study.Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 analyzes the accuracy,feasibility,utility and propriety of "Hangzhou Social Evaluation" respectively from the outside neutrality view and the inside subjectivity view based on the framework of meta-evaluation.Chapter 3 adopts text analysis and case comparison to conduct the meta-evaluation analysis,and it concludes that "Hangzhou Social Evaluation" does the best in terms of feasibility,but the worst in terms of accuracy.Based on the data from the questionnaire survey and in-depth interview,on the one hand,chapter 4 carries on the comparative analysis of different officials’ cognition in accuracy,feasibility,utility and propriety of "Hangzhou Social Evaluation" with the assistance of SPSS;on the other hand,by applying the documents analysis strategy of grounded theory,it explores the factors influencing the accuracy,feasibility,utility,and propriety of "Hangzhou Social Evaluation" by coding and analyzing with the assistance of ATLAS.ti and Mindjet Mind Manager 2012.The research finds that officials with the different features in hierarchy,gender,education and age have no significant cognitive differences in the four dimensions of meta-evaluation,while government reputation and performance rank have significant effect on their cognition.In the aspect of social evaluation’s accuracy,evaluation index design and the amount of information external evaluation actors have are the main influencing factors;in the aspect of social evaluation’s feasibility,"Middle Congestion" in evaluation operation is the primary restricting factor;in the aspect of utility,unreasonable performance planning and weak evaluation results’ influence power are the problems the officials widely complains;in the aspect of adequacy,unfairness is a main problem.Chapter 5 reviews the meta-evaluation results by adopting Three Power Model and PV-GPG Model,so as to analyze the factors leading to the paradox – the contradiction between inaccuracy and sustainability of social evaluation.It concludes that Three Power Model’s analysis result: public opinion survey has the shortcoming of information asymmetry and measurement inaccuracy,supports the meta-evaluation result: social evaluation lacks of accuracy;the analysis of value creation paths by applying PV-GPG Model demonstrates the vitality of Hangzhou Mode,which contrasts the instrumental problems reflected in meta-evaluation.Based on the above analysis,chapter 6 offers some suggestions in future development of "Hangzhou Social Evaluation".In view of inertia of government structure and the obstacles of government reform,the dissertation provides a "three step" development strategy: under the present evaluation system with the feature of departments as the evaluation objects,it mainly focus on the technology improving;in mid-term,it would turn to the transformation of social evaluation model: evaluation objects will be service rather than departments so as to improve citizen awareness,responsibility mismatch and interaction between government and the public;in future,promoting the " All Processes" Government Performance Evaluation Model by deep participation is the main direction.The innovation of the dissertation may be as follows: First of all,the validity of government performance evaluation tools directly affects the quality and result of government performance evaluation,therefore,how to re-evaluate the evaluation tools would be a meaningful issue.This dissertation attempts to explore the measurement dimension and method of meta-evaluation so as to re-evaluate and re-analyze the "Thousands of People Evaluating Government Performance" mode.Secondly,based on the data of questionnaire survey,it attempts to adopt quantitative analysis method to compare and analyze cognitive differences of government officials in accuracy,feasibility,practicability and adequacy of social evaluation,and then deduces the resistance facing practical social evaluation so as to remedy the defect of lacking of internal empirical data in studying the "Thousands of People Evaluating Government Performance" mode.Furthermore,it tries to introduce the data analysis strategy of grounded theory to analyze influencing factors of accuracy,feasibility,practicability and adequacy of "Hangzhou Social Evaluation".This is not only a beneficial attempt and exploration in qualitative research but also supplying a solid empirical foundation to improve the "Thousands of People Evaluating Government Performance" mode.At the end,it reviews the meta-evaluation results by adopting Three Power Model and PVGPG Model so as to test the accuracy and application condition of meta-evaluation,and makes up the explanation inadequacy of meta-evaluation theory.