县乡财政解困和政府改革:目标兼容与路径设计

Alleviation of the Fiscal Difficulty in the County and Township Levels and Governmental Reform:Compatibility and Reform Path

本文在政府治理结构改革的框架下研究了县乡财政解困和政府改革的目标兼容性问题。首先,文章给出一个理论分析框架,用于说明政府级次安排与政府治理结构效率之间的关系。其次,在此框架下分析了精简政府级次改革方案的社会成本,指出该方案虽能够实现县乡财政解困,但却会扭曲政府改革目标,其所引致的社会成本已超出社会理性所能允许的边界。最后,文章又考察了旨在精简机构的横向政府改革与县乡财政解困的目标兼容性问题,指出基层政府辖区优化调整方案的实施能够带来政府改革和财政改革的“双赢”。

This paper focuses on the compatibility between the alleviation of the fiscal difficulty in the county and township levels and governmental reform. Firstly, the paper gave an analytic framework to explore the relationship between the vertical hierarchical arrangement and the efficiency of government governance structure. Secondly, the paper used the framework to analysis the social cost of the reform plan to reduce the governmental hierarchies . The paper pointed out that although reducing the governmental hierarchies can solve the fiscal problem facing the local governments, the social costs that the reform plan results in will surpass the limit that the Chinese society can bear in the period of economic transition. Finally, this paper proved the compatibility between the alleviation of the fiscal difficulty in the county and township levels and the horizontal reform plan of restructuring local governments. The paper pointed out that the horizontal reform, such as the re-mapping of adjacent cities or adjacent counties, merging smaller towns and townships, would not only improve government governance , but also alleviate the fiscal difficulty of the county and township governments.