分权治理与地方政府责任研究述评

A Review of Decentralized Governance and Local Government Accountability

地方政府责任和治理是世界各国政府分权改革中的一个基本问题。早期财政联邦制理论将分权引入政府公共支出的分析,维持市场的财政联邦制理论则考虑了政府组织结构与激励问题,结合分权和治理两个维度,带来了地方政府、财政激励与经济发展关系的理解。近来的研究进一步表明不同的政治体制下地方政府责任机制和治理结构的差异,同时发展中国家分权治理的实践表明,既定的不同政治体制下,公民参与是强化地方政府责任的一种重要机制,参与式预算就是其中"自下而上"的重要责任机制,对中国政治集权经济分权下地方政府治理具有一定的作用。

Local government accountability and governance is a fundamental issue in the decentralization reform of the govements around the world.While early fiscal federalism theory utilizes decentralization into the analysis of public expenditure,market-preserving federalism(MPF) with the two issues the government structure and incentives taken into account and combining both decentralization and governance,clarifies the relationship among local government,fiscal incentives and economic development.Recent researches confirm the heterogeneity in accountability mechanism and governance structure among different political systems and recent decentralization practices in developing countries show that under different political systems citizen participation is a significant machenism to strengthen the accountability of local governments and that the participatory budgeting,one of its 'bottom-up' accountability mechanism,would improve local governance in China characterized by political centralization and economic decentralization.