Regulate Department Interests

Government owes the character of publicity. Plato’s Justice, Waldo’s Ultimate Values orFrederickson’s Public Administration Spirit are equal to the concept of Public Interests. Toprovide public goods and services, to realize public interests reflect governmental character ofpublicity, which is also the basis of governmental legitimacy. Expansion of governmentalpower causes problems such as organization overstaffed and low efficiency. With theSpreading of Stagflation in the economy of western nations in the1970s, governmentintervention was wildly oppugned. Hayek warned that in front of government intervention is a“road to serfdom”, Public choice theory proves the internal connection of Government Failureand the Government Officials’ self-interest. Government must face the most hostileenvironment caused by criticism to bureaucracy malady and government self-interest. Thus,government is no longer the representative of public interests.Department Interests means a phenomenon that government’s goal aims at maximizingself-interest which should be realizing public interest, and finally leading to the impairment ofpublic interests. Department interests witch roots in officials’ self-interest is also affected bythe environment of Institution. This article researches political and economical environmentof China, proves that special history and culture, changing of traditional value,Path-dependence and institutional defect are promotion factors of governmental self-interestbehaviors. The impairments of public interest caused by department interests manifest in: totake part in market competition, breaking the rule of market and causing externality；to failthe construction of Rule by Law and weaken the authority of law; causing corruption; todestabilize the foundation of regime, doing harm to stability of society. Cause its illegitimate,most nations use restrain methods to against department interests. Department interests rootsin bureaucracy’s character of monopoly. Cause of the advantages of message and themonopoly of professionalism in bureaucracy, restrain methods could nether get rid of officials’self-interest nor change innate characteristics. Thus, the common methods could only restraindepartment interests but eliminate it. This paper through expounding that department interests possesses the character of “objective rationality”, proves that department interests and publicinterests could be unified and that interest drives government behaviors. On this basis, thearticle proposes its perspective to solve the issue: Regulate department interests. This methodmeans to give up criticism against self-interest motivation of officials, instead of that, to leaddepartment interests to public interests in order to unify them. Regulate methods couldeliminate the negative effect caused by department interests, and finally achieve the goal thatrealize public interests. Also, the paper try to establish a system to regulate departmentinterests, including “government performance evaluation”,“flexibly given of administrativeauthority”,“fiscal surplus self-keeping system” and optimization of temporary organizationmanagement.