庸官懒政的博弈分析

Analysis on Sloth Administration from the Game Theory Perspective

庸官懒政或行政不作为是近年中国社会关注的焦点,也是法学、政治学界讨论的热点。从经济学角度分析,公务员通过劳动或服务完成政府分配的工作任务,实现各自的经济利益和社会价值,与其他行业的从业者相比并无特别之处。从囚徒困境博弈模型可知,惩罚力度过小和奖惩激励不明确是导致庸官懒政的两大原因。工作竞争博弈模型则表明,存在公务员工资奖励制度的最优性,它将为有效解决庸官懒政问题提供理论支持。有别于庸官懒政或行政不作为的法律分析和政治分析,经济分析或博弈分析将为研究其成因和对策提供新路径。

In recent years,there has been an ongoing debate in the law and politics circles over the mediocre officials and their underperformance.Finding ways to institutionally motivate public agencies and run them efficiently remains a theoretical and practical task.We call those mediocre or passive civil servants sloth servants,and accordingly that kind of public administration sloth administration.The causes for sloth lie in the lack of officials＇initiatives and systematic restraints.This article proposes some effective approaches to the promotion of initiatives.Being economically better off is one of the main career objectives of most civil servants,so economic incentives might be effective.A working competition model is suggested in this article to analyze the internal motivation mechanism.It is suggested in this paper that competition among individual civil servants should be encouraged and their bonus and benefits should correspond to their performance and diligence.A fair mechanism of performance evaluation should be established to reduce randomness and willthus win individuals＇trust.Due to various conflicts in power,roles,interests and responsibility they might encounter in their work,some public servants tend to act passively and selectively,responding only to affairs that are beneficial to themselves,while ignoring those that are not.Routine chores can be simply classified into three types：（a）work undervalued by principals;（b）technical and professional work that is difficult to be evaluated;（c）work in which responsibility,power and divisions of labor are hard to balance.Similar to other professions,it is sensible for the civil servants and the officials to pursue economic interests and social values when they provide professional services within the government.Competition and collaboration between civil servants are typically the case of the prisoner＇s dilemma,in which neither party can be better off if all individuals unilaterally pursue their own interests.Just like Gresham＇s Law,when one individual＇s underperformance has not been detected and punished,others will follow.For public sectors,this paper puts forward two suggestions.Firstly,it is reasonable to establish a fair and effective mechanism of performance evaluation in terms of different outputs.Targets,benchmarks,and other indicators can offer criterion for auditing and assessing the performance of public agencies.Secondly,it is desirable to establish an incremental bonus mechanism.A reasonable system provides an effective way of distributing benefits and blames,as well seeking redress when it comes to malperformance.Thus a balance between individual official＇s performance and their evaluation can be achieved.All in all,according to the prisoner＇s dilemma model,there are two reasons bringing about sloth administration：inadequate penalties and unclear incentives.A better civil-servant salary incentive system will solve the problem of sloth administration.Therefore,distinguished from the legal analysis or the political analysis,the economic analysis of sloth administration provides a new perspective for its causes and countermeasures.