为创新而竞争:一种新的地方政府竞争机制

Competition for Innovation:A New Competitive Mechanism of Local Governments

改革以来,中央政府通过经济和政治上的"锦标赛"设计,激发了地方政府在经济利益与政治利益上的激烈竞争。在围绕"增长"的竞争格局下,地方政府作为"政治企业家",不断寻求地区GDP最大化。随着国家与社会关系变化以及中央政府政策的调整,地方政府的竞争格局逐渐发生变化,"增长"竞争为地方政府获取经济收益的空间正日益缩小,为获取相对竞争优势,地方政府开始为"社会创新"而竞争。为"社会创新"竞争,源于结构变迁、制度压力与绩效考核指标的变化。围绕创新的竞争或许能够促进地方政府转向基于公共利益的竞争,迈入为善治而竞争的轨道。

It is proposed in this paper that ＂social innovation＂ has become a new competitive mechanism among local governments in China. Under the authoritarian political system, the central government relies on fiscal decentralization and ＂political tournament＂ to motivate the local governments to compete for economic and political interests. It is GDP-oriented view of achievements and ＂achievement-promotion＂ incentive model that can explain the reasons why local governments are interested in business and investment, and why they manipulate the land and urbanization to accelerate economic growth. However, it is hard to explain why the local governments are eager to become reform pilot and why they frequently take initiative to reforms and consequently cut their own interests. It can＇t explain why would local governments spend more money rather than put money into livelihood projects （accounted for 60%- 70% of local public expenditure）. And why local governments actively carry out risky social innovation. If the ＂achievement-promotion＂ logic is unchanged, the only explanation is that ＂achievements＂ changed. Preliminary analysis shows, competitive situation of local government is different from the previous.. With the further market-oriented reforms, the central government continued to through reform and institutional innovation to solve social problems those brought by economic reform, ＂reform＂ evolved from means of effective governance to policies ＂target＂ itself; with government economic development space narrowing, cost increases. The advantage of GDP-oriented competition mechanism reduced greatly. Local governments need to find a new point of ＂achievements＂ growth, ＂social innovation＂ become the first choice for local governments as key tasks, ＂political entrepreneurs＂ keen ＂organizational change＂. This research selected an official social innovation sector of a county in L district which is one of the reform pilot as the research object, to obtain experience data through participant observation and in-depth interviews also collect official policy texts and relative literature to analyze the county government innovation behavior, The research tries to answer： What has changed of the local governments competing objectives and restrictive condition？ How ＂innovation＂ competitive mechanism happened？ What innovative strategies taken and what the type of innovation？ What the institutional logic behind innovation behavior？ What is the impact on the governance structure and public policy is likely to bring？ It is reasonably expected in this research based on the collected facts and data： to form an explanatory framework of ＂social innovation＂ behavior of local government from the perspective of local government competition. The conclusions of this paper are as follows., since the reform and opening up, the central government has, through the ＂championship＂ design of economic and political, stimulated competition in the local government on economic interests and political interests. In the competition around the ＂growth＂, the local government serves as a ＂political entrepreneur＂, and constantly seeks to maximize the regional GDP. With the adjustment of changes in national and social relations and the policy of the central government, the competitive landscape of local governments is greatly changed. ＂Growth＂ competition for local governments to get economic benefits of space is increasingly narrow. In order to obtain the relative competitive advantage, the local government began to compete for ＂social innovation＂. The choice of ＂social innovation＂ competition is due to the structure change, and the system pressure and the pedormance evaluation index changes. Around the ＂Innovation＂ competition may be able to promote local government has turned to the competition based on public interest; enter a good governance and competitive track.