Viewing The Fulfillment And Transformation Of Local Governments' Function From Its Fiscal Expenditure

Question about government's function is invariably one of the government's basic problems. The establishment of the socialist market economy system requires a re-recognition of the relation between government and the market or society. The government's function should be changed and government's function system be set up to meet the market economic system. As an important component of the administrative system, the local government plays an extremely important role not only in course of the open reform, but also in the process of system transition. As for the local government, rational government's function is an objective demand for the market economy, which is also essential to promote the development of local economy growth and society development. The transformation of the local government's function is different from that of the central government. So, studying the implement and the transition of the function of local government has realistic meanings in current situation. The local expenditure has an outstanding characteristic that it can show local government's financial payment, which is to realize its' functions, offer local public products and service and attain necessities and labor. So, the thesis chooses some city in Henan Province as the typical example which takes the local expenditure over the years from middle 1990s last century to the beginning of this century as the researching object and uses methods such as combining practice with the theory, standardize analysis and empirical analysis, quantity and quality analysis, comparative analysis, etc to do some research on the implement and transition of the local government function under the condition of the market economy so that it can offer some references and advice to further boost the transition of local government's function. The paper includes mainly three parts: In the first section, the content of government's function and the discussion about government's function in the western countries have been explained at first, and then it proposes that the development and establishment of socialist market economy system of our country demands the transition of government's function and the local government is also the important component in government's system whose function transformation is equally extremely urgent. So, some experience of the western developed country can be used as the reference to define the division and the content between the central authority and local in the present market-based process of our country. The second part beginning with relation between the expenditure and government's function proposes that changes of the structure and scale of the local expenditure in the economy development of the market in recent years were utilized to investigate the situation of the function fulfilling and changes of the local government. It takes a typical city in Henan Province, L city, as an example, and analyses its financial revenue, expenditure scale and structure from 1995 to 2003 through collecting and calculating relevant data to show the fulfilling and transition of the function of local government on the base of this analysis finally. It mainly analyses the following contents: The government's function of economic construction, of social development and security, of administrative management and extra-budgetary expenditure and government's function. On the basis of the analysis in the second part, the third part proposes the functions of a great many local governments in our country do not still meet the development of market economy at present, and remain the behaviors under traditional planned economic system to some extent They are showed mainly in the following aspects: The normal performance and changing of the function of local government is enslaved to the scale of financial resources in the local. The "absent" and "offset" in local financial expenditure is determined by the" absent" and "offset" of local government function. Therefore, the focal responsibility to the government work at all levels is still to...