基层维稳实践中的“规范化”形态与非正式治理——以信访专项救助资金的运作实践为例

“Formalization”Characteristics and Informal Operations in Local Governments' Stability-Maintaining Practice

当代中国经济发展与社会变迁过程中出现的各类矛盾使社会稳定成为愈发重要的议题。具体到基层治理过程中,维护稳定的政策目标通常被具体化为"降低信访总量"的核心要求。基层政府在定量考核压力之下,时常以物质补偿作为上访人停止上访的交换条件,即"物质安抚"的维稳策略。论文以此类物质安抚策略作为切入点,讨论其如何被"信访专项救助资金"及附带的各类规范文件与审批流程加以巩固,在外观上呈现更为科层化、规范化与标准化的特征,并通过实证案例分析发现,上述规范化特征对于基层政府治理行为而言,仅限于形式上的变化,并未在实质上使基层政府行为转向科层理性。在信访专项救助资金运行过程中,规则或制度存在的意义并非约束裁量权,反而在于减少基层维稳过程中自由裁量的成本与风险,其中体现了基层政府具体手段的调整而非治理观念的变革。

Grievances and conflicts have made social stability a critical issue in contemporary China,and local governments,especially grassroots local governments are facing increasingly serious bureaucracy pressure of'maintaining social stability',which means to keep protesters or petitioners from reaching out to higher authorities. As dealing with petitioning becomes part of daily routine,a flexible,informal strategy of'material pacification'is widely used by local governments,that is,to negotiate with petitioners,encouraging them to trade off legal rights or claims for economic interests.Empirical analysis shows that the government enjoys much flexibility and unchecked discretion during this material pacification process. In recent years,however,a special fund to'help petitioners in economic difficulties'has been developed and widely adopted,as a more'institutionalized'way to pacify petitioners with material interests.This special fund comes with a certain set of rules,documents and procedures,andexhibits some features of bureaucracy rationality,while case studies in this paper reveals that these'standardization'or'bureaucratic'inclinations turn out to be little more than exterior changes. Looking at the larger picture,it is easy to discover that informal practices have gradually been replaced with institutional,bureaucratic setups in transitional China's policy process. The special fund discussed above,like many similar policy designs,does reflect some kind of instrumentalist rationality on the one hand but fails to curve local discretion on the other,and both flexible,informal practices and those with bureaucratic features serve as adaptive policy instruments in China's policy process.