“软编制约束”:对地方财政供养规模隐性增长的一种解释

“Soft Constraint of Officially Budgeted Posts”: an Explanation of the Recessive Growth of the Scale of Local Governments' Financial Support Employment

"软编制约束"是指地方政府突破核定编制约束,向社会或下级政府索取人力资源,由此造成政府财政供养规模的隐性增长。地方政府突破编制约束的动力机制在于:为应对考核机制,地方政府不惜动用人海战术对社会进行管理与控制,而政府扩张规模引起的责权利不对称对此也有影响。从宏观制度背景看,中国特殊的国家-社会关系和纵向政府间关系增强了这一趋势。基于此,治理范围的调整、治理重点的转变、治理的多元化、治理能力的提高等应是今后地方政府改革的方向。

＂Soft constraint of officially budgeted posts＂ means that local governments break through the constraint of approved of- ficially budgeted posts （Bianzhi） standard and keep asking for human resource from society or governments at a lower level, resulting in the recessive growth of the scale of local governments＇ financial support employment. The dynamic mechanism of local governments to break through the constraint of officially budgeted posts lies in the assessment mechanism and incentive system, which even drives local governments to use the huge-crowd strategy to manage and control the society. Moreover, the asymmetry among ob- ligation, power and rights caused by the expansion of government size may contribute to this trend, which at the same time, from the perspective of macro institutional background, the special state-social relationship and vertical relationship between different levels of governments in China also reinforce. Based on this above, therefore, the adjustment of governance scope, transformation of governance focus, pluralism of governance and enhancement of governance capability should be the direction of the reform of local governments in the future.