Government Purchases Of Public Services: Theory And Practice

As the economy continues to improve, the demand for public services is growing and tend to be rich and diverse. Whether the government can efficiently provide the public services has become an important criterion to judge whether the government has fulfilled its duties. So, how to provide better public services and how to provide them more efficiently have become two big issues for the government all around the world.Since 1940s, western countries became to try new methods of providing public services. After several decades of practice, government contracting-out has been widely used, which has had a profound effect on the reforms in the public area. Government contracting-out refers to a government action to purchase all or a part of public services from social service organizations and the sorts and quality of public services are defined by government. Here, social service organizations include social service agencies and business organizations. In the recent years, all levels of Chinese local government in many fields of social public service has used government contracting-out as an important approach to raise the level of public services. I believe it will be very meaningful the research government contracting-out.This paper tries to answer three questions:(1) Why the government should use the model of government contracting-out in the area of public services; (2) What kind of social service organizations should government buy the public service from; (3) If the government decides to use the model of government contracting-out, which kind of government contracting-out government should use.In order to answer these three questions, the paper is divided into fives chapters:Chapter One:Introduction. In this chapter we introduce the purpose and significance of this study. We also introduce the research framework and the main research methods we used in this paper.Chapter Two:The Theoretical Basis of Government Contracting-out. In this chapter, firstly we define two concepts, which are Public Goods and Social Service Agencies. Secondly, we summarize the main theories that about government contracting-out. There three main theories, which are New Public Management Theory, Governance theory and Government Economics.Chapter Three:Practice of Government Contracting-out in Western Countries. In this chapter, we give a brief introduction of the practice of government contracting-out in the United States and Britain. And then we present the main models of government contracting-out. By researching the practice of government contracting-out in western countries, we conclude that:Government should play an important role in government contracting-out; the supply of public services should be diversified; market mechanism and social organizations are indispensable elements in government contracting-out.Chapter Four:Practice of Government Contracting-out in China. In this chapter, we take the practice of government contracting-out in shanghai as an example, and analyze the outcomes and main problems of the practice of government contracting-out in china.Chapter Five:Construction of The Government Contracting-out System. This chapter is the core of the paper, in which we provide suggestions in order to construct the government contracting-out System in china. This chapter is divided into three parts:the roadmap to build the government contracting-out System, the barriers in the construction of the government contracting-out System in china, detailed suggestions to build the government contracting-out System in china.