Dependent Political-social Relationship And Government’s Performance Evaluation On Purchasing Social Work Services

With the vigorous development of government’s purchase of social work services and social work institutions,performance evaluation has become an indispensable tool for the management and supervision of government’s purchase of social work services.Since the Ministry of Civil Affairs and the Ministry of Finance issued the Guiding Opinions on Government Purchasing Social Work Services in 2012,the central and local governments have successively issued a series of guiding documents,fully explaining the important role of performance evaluation in promoting the standardization of government purchasing social work services.However,due to the restriction of China’s administrative system and social environment,the theory,method and mechanism of government procurement service performance evaluation are not perfect,and there are many problems in the specific practice process,which makes the performance evaluation process a mere formality and the performance evaluation function cannot be fully exerted.Why is the performance evaluation of the government’s purchase of social work services a mere formality? How did the phenomenon of "becoming a mere formality" come about? What is the root cause?Based on the principal-agent theory,this paper uses the case study method to explore the principal-agent relationship of all parties in the performance evaluation of government-purchased social work services in Guangzhou A social work organization B project,and explains the performance evaluation,the reasons for its formation and the optimization path.Through in-depth interviews with relevant personnel of government departments,social workers and evaluation experts,the case was deeply investigated,and it was found that the principal-agent relationship in the evaluation process of project B of social worker A was in an asymmetric state,which led to the evaluation becoming a mere formality,which affected the validity and authenticity of the evaluation results and failed to give full play to the evaluation function.In-depth interviews found that the dependent social-political relationship is the root cause of the performance evaluation of government’s purchase of social work services,which is a mere formality and the evaluation function is insufficient.Dependent politicalsocial relations are characterized by policy dependence,capital dependence and organizational dependence.Its concrete manifestations are the offside,absence and dislocation of government functions,the low level of professionalism,lack of objectivity,and the lack of obvious evaluation benefits of social organizations,and the dependence on survival among social organizations,which finally leads to the performance evaluation of government’s purchase of social services becoming a mere formality.On this basis,this paper suggests taking measures to eliminate the dependent relationship between government and society,so as to improve the performance evaluation efficiency of government’s purchase of social work services.Specific policy suggestions include: clarifying the legal status of third-party evaluation,standardizing the responsibility of third-party evaluation,broadening the source of evaluation funds,optimizing the third-party evaluation index system,focusing on cultivating evaluation talents,establishing the information communication mechanism of evaluation process,improving the information disclosure mechanism,attaching importance to the application of evaluation results,and establishing the incentive and accountability mechanism of evaluation results.At present,the research on the principal-agent relationship of performance evaluation of government’s purchase of social services is relatively limited.The purpose of this paper is to arouse the academic circles’ in-depth thinking on the principal-agent relationship in the performance evaluation of government’s purchase of social services,so as to improve the third-party evaluation mechanism,give full play to the role of evaluation institutions and ensure the high-quality development of government’s purchase of social services.