The Provision Of Rural Road Initiated By Government Program

Tax reform in 2003 is the basic background of the transformation of rural public goods supply mode.From the perspective of the development of road construction,the public road construction is regarded as public affair in the modern sense,rather than the private affair of the individuals,and claims from village and government are two different ways basing on the grade of road:the villagers spontaneously construct roads among households,villagers’ groups and heading to higher levels of roads.While the government’s highway projects are initiated from the national road,provincial road and heading to the lower levels of roads.In this article,the rural road refers to the roads located on public land outside municipal boundaries,including national roads,provincial roads,and other roads in county and village.All the rural roads should be confirmed by the provincial traffic departments and be reported to the Ministry of National Highway for the record of road.The rural road project in N District does show the vivid profile of the practice of government’s project in favor of public good in rural area.The supply of rural road as a government project is the object of this paper.The system of tax and fee is an indispensable parameter in modern rural governance,and it is also the key to promote the popularization of rural public goods supply to a wider level.For so a long time the villagers and government stood at both ends of the supply chain of public goods,respectively,with their own roles.But the govcrnment projects form a bridge to connect public will and government’s will.But these wills are not always naturally consistent,which has raised a question:regarding to the supply of public goods,whether should we respect the public opinion,or the public propositions presented by government?If the two can establish a circuit,so that the government’s rural construction ideas and villagers’ construction advocates match themselves,then I am close to the target of researching the meaning of the supply of the project.What is the intrinsic logic of public goods supply as government project?At least,we can find two traces,of which one is the logic of legitimacy,and the other is the logic of impersonality.Government project can promote the process of public goods supply by awareness of rules,and also enhance the recognition of government behavior by providing a clearer recognition of results.What’s more,it shows an impressive image of official performance.The logic of impersonality refers to the project-oriented process of bureaucratic organization with a set of established procedures,rationalization and procedural management.It runs with the trend of modernization of management technology,and also with more efficient and standardized performance compared with villagers’ self-organization.This highly relies on bureaucratic system with rigorous procedures,standardized project programs and unique vertical management technology in highway management.How does government project mechanism work in rural road construction’?In this paper,the N District shows an example of road construction in natural village.In-depth analysis of villagers’ satisfaction,the project’s fund-raising efficiency,the government’s efficiency in operation process and the allocation of project resources in rural areas are taken into consideration.For fund raising,government subsidies accounted for 60%of the total investment in road construction.In some poverty-stricken villages,the percentage even reached 80%.But whether the project achieved or not,it ultimately depends on the actions taken by the villagers to fill their own funding gap after subsidies.When it comes to management efficiency,the traffic authorities,characterized by vertical management,is often subject to district-level government’s leadership,so the township government cannot make a huge influence on the project,since it only assumes the "clerk" duties.As to the allocation of project resources,the annual quota allocation will take full account of the balance of the number of townships declared,but overall,poor villages and rich villages are more likely to successfully declare the project,which is closely related to the government’s performance considerations.This paper further analyzes the triple dilemma arising from the duality of impersonality and legitimacy:1)conflicts of preferences raised among different levels of government in the allocation of the project;2)the plight of government to fulfill its commitment during outsourcing process;3)the shortage of mobilization when there is mismatch between the government project and the rural demand.The reason why the above-mentioned triple dilemma should be considered is that even though a wide range of rural roads have been constructed,there are still some blind spots without government projects,because the government doesn’t have enough motivation to improve those areas,such as the road between the villagers’ groups and the roads that have been completed through the project construction but have been damaged in short time.At the end of this paper,I try to discuss the residual control rights in the supply of public goods,and argue that effective supply of public goods depends on 1)the full mobilization of the villagers through decentralization,2)the authorization of the township government to strengthen execution capability of the project,3)the market regulation of outsourcing by centralization.This idea may be able to provide a favorable supplement to the public goods’ supply by government project on the "last mile" issue of rural roads.