地方政府创新过程中正式与非正式政治耦合研究——以公安微博为例

The Coupling of Formal and Informal Politics in the Process of Local Governments Innovation :A Case Study of Police Microblogs

以公安微博为例,分析了自下而上的地方政府创新过程中正式政治与非正式政治耦合的机制。基于中国制度变迁、非正式政治、政府行为等理论文献以及对于X省Y市案例研究,提出一个地方政府创新过程中正式与非正式政治耦合机理的初步分析框架。分析框架指出,在中国地方政府组织体系和领导中心的决策机制这一情境下,地方政府创新往往是正式政治和非正式政治耦合的产物,而非正式政治在政府创新决策过程中往往起到支配性的作用。通过案例分析,发现非正式政治在创新的接纳阶段起着核心作用,正式政治成为创新扩散阶段的关键推动力,在创新的实施过程中需要通过非正式政治支持获取正式制度安排,非正式政治的根深蒂固和正式政治的弱化则为创新的后续发展带来高度的不确定性。尽管存在个案研究的代表性以及政府内部的政治敏感资料难以全面获取等局限,该研究仍在一定程度上揭开了地方政府创新过程的"黑箱",有助于促进对地方政府创新行为逻辑的理解。

The objective of this paper is to explore the coupling mechanism of formal and informal politics during the bottom-up innovation process in the context of Chinese local government. A theoretical framework built upon the literature of institution change,informal politics and government behaviors was proposed. The framework was further substantiated by a case study of the adoption and diffusion of police microblogs in City Y. The analysis reveals that the adoption and diffusion process of local government innovations in China is confined by the administrative system,leader-centered decision-making mechanism,and the formal and informal politics. An innovation can only be adopted and diffused on condition that the informal politics are coupled with formal politics,with the former usually acting as a dominant role. The results also suggest that:informal politics play the key roles in the adoption of innovation;formal politics are the key driven factors of innovation diffusion;formal institution arrangements usuallygained from informal politics are fundamental to the implementation of innovation;and the majority of local government innovations are faced with high uncertainties in terms of sustainability due to the strong informal politics and weak formal politics deeply rooted in Chinese government culture. The key limitation of the study is that it focuses solely on the adoption and diffusion of police microblogs,which probably makes it difficult to generalize the results to other types of local government innovations. Another limitation arises from the difficulty of collecting richly complex and politically sensitive data in the government context. However,the present study can still provides a starting-point for further research which can be conducted with a greater sample of data,and valid and reliable measures of formal and informal politics. This study provides insights into the nature of government innovation behaviors from the perspective of the interaction of formal and informal politics.