公共治理与政府的“隐性规模”--基于中美两国差异的比较分析

Public Governance and the "Implicit Size" of Government

政府规模及其影响因素一直是公共行政学研究的前沿问题。然而,以往对政府规模的研究都关注政府的正式规模,即政府直接雇用的公务人员,较少关注政府的"隐性规模",即处于政府之外、由政府公共财政供养的人员。不仅如此,政府规模的研究也缺乏与更宏观视野中的公共治理的联系。本文比较中国和美国的政府的正式规模与"隐性规模",提出两国政府规模的差异,既表现为结构、功能上的差异,也表现为治理方式上的差异。本文提出,在公共治理的视角下,评价政府的根本标准不在于政府规模是更大还是更小,而是政府职能是否能更好地回应公民和社会的需求,以及同样的公共开支是否使用得更有效率与效益。为此,中国政府应当促进不同公共部门间的协同,实现公私部门间的合作,同时转变政府能力建设的重点与方向。

The issues on government size and its influencing factors are always regarded as the cutting-edge problems of political science research. However, previous relevant researches only focus on the official government size, namely the civil servants directly employed by the government on the one hand. On the other, the ＂implicit size＂ of government, which implies the staff supported by public finance but work outside of government, is rarely discussed. Moreover, the connection between the study on government size and perspec- tive of public governance is still limited. Based on the comparison on official and implicit government size between China and the United States, this research finds the differences between the two countries lie in the structure, function as well as mode of governance. The arti- cle puts forward that the fundamental standard of evaluating government is not whether the government size is larger or smaller, but whether the government function could better respond to the citizens and social demand and whether the same quantity of government ex- penditure could be utihsed more efficiently and effectively. Therefore the Chinese government should promote the cooperation between different public departments, establish the collaboration between the public and private sectors and transform the emphasis and orienta- tion of the development of government capability.