谁主沉浮:电视问政中的政府长期回应性及其动力研究

Who Is In Charge?:A Study of Long-Term Government Responsiveness and the Dynamics of Television Political Inquiries

电视问政是具有独特属性的问政形式。为了探究电视问政中政府长期回应性及其动力,本研究以南宁市的《向人民承诺——电视问政》节目为例,从上层压力、下层压力和短期回应质量三个方面提出研究假设,利用2014—2018年的编码数据,使用离散时间事件史分析和Heckman两阶段模型等方法进行了实证分析。结果表明,电视问政中政府的长期回应质量明显低于短期回应质量;短期回应质量较低的议题和上级领导重视程度更高的议题更容易在电视问政中被长期关注,而被问责过的议题则更不容易被长期关注;上级领导重视程度越高和媒体关注度越高的议题,政府的长期回应质量越好,短期内公众舆论的负面程度和问责压力则对政府的长期回应质量没有显著影响;同时,政府内部的改革可以促进长期回应质量的提升,议题解决所需的单位时间协调成本则会随着时间的增加而降低。异质性分析的结果表明,与短期回应更注重问责官员、推动议题解决不同,电视问政的长期回应更倾向于避免对政府或官员不利的议题,更注重宣传政绩。

Television political inquiries are a unique form of political consultation and also a valuable tool for local governments to respond to public demands and to enhance their governance.The responses by the government have always been a topic of interest in academic research.However,due to data limitations,measurements of government responsiveness often remain at a superficial level in terms of response rates,response speeds,and other indicators;additionally,there has been no long-term tracking of the results of government responses.At the same time,television political inquiries are the only way for“top leaders”in government departments to respond directly,thus they have a unique research value.This study adds an important indicator to the quality of measures of government responsiveness and also adds long-term tracking of the response results to explore how government responsiveness to televised political inquiries has evolved over time as well as how such policy issues have received long-term attention and have been continuously improved.To explore the government's long-term responsiveness and motivations with respect to television political inquiries,this study takes the program“Promise to the People—TV politics in Nanning City”as an example and proposes several hypotheses with respect to:1)upper-level pressures,2)lower-level pressures,and 3)the quality of short-term responses.Coded data from 2014 to 2018,descriptive statistics,a discrete-time event history analysis,and a Heckman Two-stage Model are then added to our empirical analysis.The results of the empirical analysis indicate that the quality of long-term responses is significantly lower than the quality of short-term responses.Issues with a lower short-term response quality and higher upper-level leadership attention are more likely to be addressed in the long term,while issues that are held accountable are likely to receive long-term attention.Attention by higher levels of the upper-level leadership and media attention result in better quality long-term government responses,whereas the intensity of negative public opinion and short-term accountability pressures do not have a significant impact on the quality of long-term responses.Additionally,internal government reforms can promote improvements in the long-term quality of the responses,The results of a heterogeneity analysis suggest that,unlike short-term responses that focus on holding officials accountable and working to resolve the issues,long-term responses tend to avoid issues that are unfavorable to the government or to the officials and instead they tend to emphasize promotion of government achievements.The higher the importance of the superiors and the greater the media attention,the better the quality of the government's long-term responses.A negative degree of public opinion and short-term accountability pressures have no significant impact on the quality of long-term governments responses.At the same time,government reforms can improve the quality of long-term responses and the costs of unit time coordination required for the resolution of the issues decrease with time.The results of heterogeneity analysis show that,unlike short-term responses that focus on holding officials accountable and work to resolve the issues,long-term responses to television political inquires are more inclined to avoid issues that are unfavorable to the government or to government officials and to pay more attention to the promotion of government achievements.In short,the core power of television politics comes from government power,and television politics is a form of political inquiry that focuses on the government rather than on the public.The issue of how to strengthen public participation in television politics is an important topic that deserves future attention.