The Flexible Administration In The Context Of Chinese Politics(1949-2019)

Over the past more than 70 years since the founding of the PRC,China's economy has realized sustained and fast growth.In particular,what attracting the attention of the world is that,while maintaining the high-speed economic development,China has also maintained the sustained stability of politics and society.Chinese miracle has become a major topic with continuous concern from scholars both at home and abroad.This paper combs through the morphological characteristics,transformation mechanism and changing trend of administrative execution since 1949 from a section of administrative reform,namely the perspective of operating mechanism,and with the government's administrative execution as the incision,and provides a new perspective,namely flexible administration,in the Context of Chinese Politics.Flexible administration refers to the flexible execution of the existing policies,rules,decisions and deployment,or the creation and establishment of new policies and rules unilaterally or jointly by the administrative subjects and objects for realizing certain administrative objectives.What corresponding to flexible execution is rigid execution,which refers to the strict execution of policies,rules,decisions and deployment by administrative subjects and objects by top-to-down compulsory and imperative means of execution for realizing certain administrative objectives.Flexible administration and rigid administration are not clearly distinguished,or unable to co-exist,and in certain period,they are displayed at different degrees based on different political,economic and cultural situations.In the period of Mao,the administrative execution was mainly rigid.The rigid administration in this period was originated from the following three driving forces:incentive mechanism of political loyalty,the operation mechanism of political mobilization and the "upward responsibility system" of administrative subjects.The rigid administration in this period had both positive and negative validity.On the one hand,rigid administration ensured the effective implementation of national decisions and deployment.On the other hand,the establishment of rigid administration was more due to the guidance of ideology,the co-acting force of organization,and the super authority of leaders,so it often leads to uncontrollable negative externalities,or to an alternative flexible administration,such as excessive execution,false execution,target replacement and loss of administrative autonomy,etc..At the early stage of the reform,facing the comprehensive crisis caused by the Cultural Revolution,promoting reform became the necessary requirement for China to save itself and extricate itself from poverty.The reform started with the economy,and the economic reform aroused the political reform.Administrative reform was a breakthrough for political reform.The government left flexible space for the explorers of the new road through the streamline administration and institute decentralization.Flexible administration causes restlessness.As seen from the perspective of institutional factors,the restlessness of flexible administration was originated from the following factors:the contradiction between "one-origin administration" and the diversification of executive subjects,the deviation of execution under the hierarchical structure,the lack of rigidity based on institutional defects,and the potential demand for power exchange.The internal driving factors for the government's pursuit of development,including the pursuit of interests by different subjects,the pursuit of administrative efficiency and the promotion of "performance first",etc.,also further gave birth to flexible administration.The flexible administration based on the reform and exploration was generally divided into two categories:the pilot authorized by the central government and the independent exploration by local government itself.In the period of marketization promotion,flexible administration was expanded quickly.On the one hand,in order to promote the market-oriented reform,the central government further "decentralized the power and transferred profits",but the construction of relevant systems relatively lagged and the national capacity was weakened somewhat;on the other hand,the market developed rapidly,but the mechanism was not perfect,and the market's ability to counter the government was relatively weak,leading to the expansion of flexible administration.The flexible administration in this period mainly included the gaming between the central and local governments and the collusion between local governments vertically,the regional competition and local protection horizontally,and extreme flexible administration under the power abusiveness,such as performance engineering,power rent-seeking,etc..The flexible administration of gaming and competition type stimulated the momentum for local development,but also brought about decentralization,vicious competition,power abusiveness,official corruption,etc..With the spread of flexible administration,its negative effects,such as system weakening,low administrative efficiency,abnormal economic fluctuation,breeding of administrative corruption,and overdraft of the government's public trust?etc.,increasingly emerged and attracted attention.Aiming at the negative effects of flexible administration,the central government adopted many measures at the same time to correct the flexible administration since the 18th CPC National Congress.In terms of providing temporary solutions to the problems,it mainly strengthened political inspection and anti-corruption with rigid measures,reinforced governmental supervision,and promoted the implementation and audit of policies;in terms of getting at the root of problems,the central government strengthened rigid administration from the two paths,namely the strict government of the party and the administration according to law,so as to squeeze the flexible administration space with the construction of system and the construction of rule by law.The flexible administration,especially negative flexible administration,has shrunk greatly since the 18th CPC National Congress,and rigid administration has begun to return.The rigidity of administrative execution in this period is more originated from institutional constraints.The seemingly unreasonable phenomenon of flexible administration forms a part of national governance to a large extent.The formation and development of flexible administration are deeply influenced by the traditional political situation,such as the administrative heritage in the imperial Age,the decline and revitalization of the old empire and the strong demands of the communists for development,etc..The restlessness,expansion and shrinkage of flexible administration are even directly restricted by the modern governmental governance environment,including the change of ideology,the change of social principal contradiction,the change of government function,the change of economic system,the influence of economic globalization and the development of network society,and also affected by the focuses of administrative system reform.The existing administrative practices show that flexible administration is an informal behavior with sub-institutionalized characteristics based on goal orientation in a specific organizational environment.Flexible administration has objectively promoted the social transformation and obtained obvious administrative performance,but it has also aroused the division and transaction of the overall authority of the country,and brought a series of serious social and economic problems.Genarally speaking,flexible administration has its "critical point ",that is,to adhere to the political line,safeguard the authority of the central government and serve the overall interests.By taking it as the criterion of judgment,the central government can correct and suspend flexible administration anytime.Therefore,flexible administration is a political strategy and a transitional administrative behavior in a specific stage and its development direction is the administration of the rule by law.Strengthening the administration of the rule by law is not simply abandoning and completely eradicating flexible administration.On the one hand,we shall further reduce the flexible administrative space and resolutely reduce the unnecessary flexible administration;On the other hand,we shall avoid the extreme rigidity of mechanical pursuit of administrative execution,prevent too strict requirements from making individual phenomena of lazy administration become a common phenomenon,allow the retention of moderate flexible administration,ensure the flexible response of the government to the needs of complex societies and risk societies,and encourage government officials to boldly implement the reform and exploration based on the public interest and the flexible administration of first trial through the design of systems such as fault tolerance,error correction and incentive responsibility,etc.