Rule Of Citizens Participationin Government Performance Evaluation Research

The building of a government ruled by law is an important part ofChina’s construction of political civilization, democracy and legal system.In October2010, the document “Opinions of the State Council onstrengthening the building of a government ruled by law”was issued inorder to implement the basic strategy of governing the country accordingto law, promote law-based administration in an all-round way, andprovide reference for strengthening the building of a law-ruledgovernment in the new situation. The law-based administration is thefoundation of the law-ruled government construction. Public participation,as an important guarantee for the law-based administration, is also anintegral part and a typical model of law-ruled government construction,whose manner and extent determine the process of realizing the objectiveof legal government. As the evaluation subjects, citizens participate in specific ways toevaluate government performance. Strengthening public participation isthe working emphasis and an inevitable trend of promoting governmentperformance evaluation. In recent years, with the acceleration oflaw-ruled government construction, some local governments havepromoted the government performance evaluation and placed publicparticipation as a main task. Unfortunately, the research in this field islimited; therefore, this paper is of great theoretical value and practicalsignificance.By taking public participation in government performanceevaluation as the research object, this paper starts with the survey ofcitizens of Changshu, elaborates the real state of their participation, andthen analyzes the related problems and causes, on which basis, proposes ageneral idea and concrete measures on how citizens participate ingovernment performance evaluation.Firstly, this paper introduces the concept of law-ruled governmentand the category of public participation in law-ruled governmentperformance evaluation, elaborates the background and researchsignificance of the chosen topic, compares the domestic and internationalresearches, and puts forward the research approaches and methods. Thesecond chapter defines the concepts of law-ruled government,government performance evaluation and public participation, analyzes Thomas’ public participation theory, public management theory andpublic service theory, laying a solid theoretical foundation. The thirdchapter depicts the situation of national public participation in law-ruledgovernment performance evaluation, giving specific attention to citizensof Changshu, and analyzes problems such as incorrect idea ofgovernment performance evaluation, unsoundness of public participationsystem, shortage of representative system, lack of participationconsciousness and capabilities, unitary of evaluation contents andmethods, and improper use of evaluation results. The fourth chapterintroduces the successful experience of Britain and America’s publicparticipation in law-ruled government performance evaluation, and pointsout the referential significance. The fifth chapter proposes a general ideaand concrete measures of promoting public participation in law-ruledgovernment performance evaluation, such as strengthening publicparticipation consciousness and capabilities, and perfecting publicparticipation system.