Overall Government Performance Evaluation

The assessment of government performance is the forefront topics of government management. As a new category,the study on overall performance of local governments in our country is still at the exploratory stage. It s a basic path of public opinion expression and undertakes the dual function of democratic orientation and technical support. Relative to the public sectors performance, public projects performance and public policies performance, overall performance of local governments with public satisfaction oriented is defined as the overall results and benefits of a specific government in a certain period (eg. one year) ,including all aspects of government functions,it reflects the development orientation of a government which hunts for social justice and democratic values.In this paper,we propose a theoretical assumption about the results-oriented of overall performance of local governments,that is under the current reality of our country,overall performance of local governments equivalents to citizen s comprehensive evaluation of local governments,and it bears the function of public opinion expression,its results will be a internal driving force of the democracy development and the administrative reform. For the quantitative analysis of 21 cities and 121 counties governments performance of Guangdong province in 2008, we construct subjective indicators of performance model , objective indicators of performance model , comprehensive index performance model and compare these three models with a single indicator of overall public satisfaction with the performance of local governments , in order to test the scientific and rationality of this hypothesis.Research shows that at the present stage, as the electoral system and voting environment are not quite mature and perfect, overall performance evaluation of government is the most conventional way for citizen s political participation.