Study On Government Competition In Economic Globalization Era

Competition penetrates widely and comprehensively through social, economic, political, cultural and physical activities. The focuses on competition and competitiveness start from economic area, and it bears abundant theoretical fruit in economic competition study. The competition exists in the non-economic area, such as political and social issues, especially governments. As special social organization, governments compete with each other, from governments in different countries, to the central and local governments in one country, to local governments in different levels, and to the different organs in the same level of government. However, compared with the economic competition theory, theoretic study on government competition is not very rich. Furthermore, the process of economic globalization is not only the one of competition between enterprises all over the world, but also the one of competition between world-wide governments. Accordingly, the study on government competition is great of theoretical and empirical significance. At present, the theoretical findings about government competition study concentrates on two theories:local government competition theory and institution competition theory. In view of the existent study in China and abroad, in addition to the complex factors influencing government competition, from the economic ones to political and social, cultural ones, the study of government competition should integrate the methodologies and findings in different subjects in order to build the grand theory of government competition, such as economy, political science, sociology, public administration, and management administration.Governments in different countries or different local governments in one country compete with each other cross-border and cross-region in the investment environment, government efficiency and institutional innovation in order to supply public goods and service, and in order to draw the factors of production, such as capital, technology, human resource, and so on. This is government competition. The direct objective of government competition is to draw more and more factors of production, from which the following ability will accrue to governments:obtaining more fiscal taxes, increasing the quantity of public goods and services in the area, improving the quality of public goods and services in the area, and enhancing comprehensive strength in the country or region. The character of government competition is different from industry competition or enterprises competition. The two kinds of competition belong to different areas and have different boundaries. But they still have some similar characters and relate each other closely. The factors that encourage and constraint government competition are also the conditions of government competition, such as 1) government possesses independent property rights, benefits and policy-making rights, and can share the competition gains; 2) the removability of factors of production and the economic openness, the benefit of removability larger than the cost; 3) governments in different countries and regions have homogeneity and heterogeneity. What should be pointed out is that institutional change, distribution of economic power and taxation reform are not the motivation but the conditions of economic competition, and they are the general prerequisites of government competition. Actually, the motivation of competition is endogenous. Government competition is the conscious activity to pursuit of the maximum of self-benefit, the instinctive self-interested activity to the scarcity of resources, the non-alternative activity to face the fiercely international or regional competition, the instinctive response to the paradox of market supply and needs. Government competition is pushed through votes in the area and government's achievement evaluation. The benefits of government competition are as follows:1) good to encourage governments to study and enterprising and optimize government policy; 2) conducive to the growth of political entrepreneurs and the innovation and optimization of government institutions; 3) beneficial to enhance government efficacy and improve the supply of public goods; and 4) helpful to protect property rights and promote economic growth. However, the anomie and impropriety of government competition will have the following influences:1) causing malignant taxes, regulation competition and trade protection, which will result in market segmentation and impede badly the formation and intensification of global or national single market; 2) twisting the market mechanism, the failure of market regulation mechanism and disrupting the normal market order; 3) repeated investment, which will hinder maximization the totality of social welfare and the optimization of resource distribution globally or nationally; 3) increase of exchange cost, damaging the national or regional long-term benefit fundamentally, and finally weakening the ability of national or regional social-economic sustainable development.Government competition is comprehensive. From the perspective of dimension of competition, government competition includes lateral competition and longitudinal competition. Lateral and longitudinal governmental competitions mean that any government agency competes with the same level agencies in the lateral level, and the same time, the government agencies compete with the agencies of higher level in the distribution of resources and control power. The lateral government competition includes governments competition in different countries, local governments competition at the same level in one country, functional departments competition at the same government level; longitudinal competition consists of the competition between upper-lower government, especially central and local government, functional departments of upper-lower governments competition. In the view of the results of government competition, government competitions include aggressive government competition, protective government competition, predatory government competition and disruptive government competition. From the quality of government competition, the government competition includes cooperative competition and non-cooperative competition; from the aspects of means of competition, government competitions have direct and indirect competition. Government competitions involves wide areas, such as the competition in the definition and protection of property rights, competition of public goods supply, industry competition, institution competition and financial competition, and so on.Government competition and government competitiveness relate each other closely; the former brings the latter in. In the economic globalization era, we do not need to study the enterprises competitiveness only, but also need to explain why the government competitiveness in some countries or regions is stronger than others; or what kind of government will have permanent competitiveness and which ones will never have competitiveness. The government competitiveness represents explicitly as the public goods or public services that government in one country or region can supply consistently more efficient than the ones in other country or region. And the government with competitiveness can obtain ability or comprehensive quality to keep sustainable development. Government competitiveness also means that government can create good environment for economic development. Government in every country or region has its competitiveness more or less, but it is not necessary to have its own core competitiveness. Generally, core competitiveness of government is inimitable and irreplaceable advantage and heterogeneity, which is hard to compare and measure directly. The core competitiveness can become the most long-range and decisive factor. The factors which determine and influence government competitiveness are relationship, resource, ability and knowledge. Even though scholars differ in the function of government competitiveness, government competitiveness plays very important role in national competition. All policies made by government influence national competitiveness directly, and the institutions and environment supplied by government influence national competitiveness indirectly.Government competitiveness is the capability of government structure, government ability and the implement ability when government competes with others. It consists of five kinds of competitiveness:public finance, financial policy, business legislation, institution framework, and social framework. During the process of increasing government competitiveness, government competitiveness structure changes regularly. It is necessary to build evaluating indicator system of government competitiveness when evaluating it. To build the evaluating indicator system, the latest theories of government competition, management, economic and social development are needed to observe and measure the development process and tendency of government competition in all nations and regions, and the principle rules, such as internality and objectiveness, reality and theory, systematicness and phases, general comparativeness and pragmatic operation, should be followed. The evaluating methods of government competitiveness are factor analysis, benchmark measurement and evaluation, definition analysis, and so on. In order to get comprehensive, systematic, objective and accurate result of government competitiveness in all countries and regions, all evaluating indicator system should be integrated.Since the reform and opening policy was started in China, competitiveness of Chinese government has been steadily growing, especially the public financial competitiveness and financial policy competitiveness. But the institutional framework, social framework and business legislation are all very weak, especially the government transparency, corruption control, government regulation, social relationship, social government, social equality and so on. The disordered competitions among local governments hinder the rising of government competitiveness in the whole country. As a whole, Chinese government competitiveness is still in its infancy stage, so that it leaves a lot of space to exalt the competitiveness. To promote Chinese government competitiveness, we must base on the general rule of development of government competitiveness, must keep and make full use of extent government advantage to reduce its weakness. Therefore, the necessary methods are as follows:1) to arise Chinese government competitiveness through the growth of CCP competitiveness, and in order to arise the CCP competitiveness, must reform the governing strategies fundamentally of CCP, to regulate and remold the governing ideas, to change strategically governing directly into indirectly; 2) to solve the problem of offsideness, omission and misalignment of government function, to adjust government boundary, to improve the structure of government function, to socialize government function and moderate government scale, reduce the governing cost, and to achieve the social-economy harmonious and sustainable development; 3)to abide by the principle of equality, voluntary, mutually benefit and negotiation, to strengthen the local governments cooperation on policy-making and function operation, to build and improve the mechanisms of communication, negotiation, consultation, benefit sharing and compensating, overseeing and adjudication among local governments, and to reform the whole government through the cooperation of local governments in order to clear up the adverse impacts of government competition and to promote government competitiveness wholly.