A Study On Citizen Participation Of Administrative Accountability In China

As a kind of system of constraining administrative power and strengthening administrative responsibility, the administrative accountability system has improved the execution and credibility of government, while promoting the construction of a responsive, constitutional and honest government. At present, China's administrative accountability system is mainly represented by consubstantial accountability inside the administrative organs, which is usually initiated by superior party committee and administrative officials of the accountability target. The oneness of the subject does not support the maximization of the accountability effect. The exertion of administrative power is closely related to the vital civil interests. Therefore civics, as the certain subject of the accountability, should ought to participate the process.Civic participation of the administrative accountability has a solid theoretical basis. From practice, the system of representation provides a fine approach to civil participation of public affairs in larger society indirectly, yet it was not able enough to make the elected politicians and officials fulfill their promises. In recent centuries, the people's sovereignty theory, the principal-agent theory, public choice theory and governance theory all believe that citizens possess the right to take part in the public affairs relate to their vital interests, in order to make up the deficiency of representation system which is stated above.At the present stage, China has initially achieved the basic conditions and routes for citizens to participate in the administrative accountability. Since the reform and open, our country's political environment has been loosing, as the top leaders attaches great importance to the supervision of the civil service by the general public, and actively support civil rights to know, to express, to participate and to supervise. The gradual perfection of legal system provides legal fundament of the participation. The rise of the civil society awakes the citizen's participation awareness. The technical condition has also improved greatly in recent years and reduces the cost of participation. On the route to participate, the existent systems of complaint, report, hearing, as well as polls and surveillance of public opinion helps to take some of the responsibilities of accountability. It is believed there will be richer ways of public participation.Currently, there are still many obstacles existing in China's public participation of accountability. Despite the conditions and approaches mentioned above, the author believes that there are still enormous potentials for public participation. The reason lies in the obstacles of the participation in reality, including inefficient supply of institutions, blocked citizen participation channel, the immaturity of the public society, the weak sense of responsibility of government officials and the deficiency of the civics themselves. These obstacles have seriously restricted the citizen participation in administrative accountability.As for approaches of the accountability, theoretically, the citizen participation administrative accountability has its basis, In reality, the citizen participation administrative accountability has also has initially realization condition and some participation ways, there are substantial obstacles but these problems are solvable. The author believes that through the perfection of institutions,and the dredging of participating channels, reconstruction of political responsibility sense, cultivation of China's public society and the strengthening public motives and abilities to participate in administrative accountability, the obstacles mentioned above could be overcome successfully and to fulfill the accountability's function of supervision and restriction on government and civil servants.