重思公共行政的效率目标

Rethinking the Role of Efficiency in Public Administration

提高效率一直是行政改革的重要目标,相应的,寻找有助于提高效率的行政安排也成了公共行政研究的一个核心主题。但在效率究竟应当在何种层面构成公共行政之目标的问题上,学术界存在着广泛的争议。技术性效率观把效率等同于投入与产出间的比率,并从这一前提出发提出了"效率还是公平"的问题,认为政府必须在效率与公平之间做出取舍。但基于对实际分配情境的分析,这种取舍是可以最小化的。帕累托式效率观把效率视为政府的治理能力,即政府去同时促进公平等首要社会目标的能力,从这一前提出发,效率与公平并不存在取舍的关系,要追求效率,政府必须有效地去同时促进公平等首要目标。从这一观点出发,效率只是政府的一个次要目标,对政府来说,更重要的是如何让效率服务于公平等首要目标。

One goal of administrative reform is to make government more efficient, which makes efficiency a core value in public administration research. However, there are disagreements among scholars about the proper role of efficiency playing in public administration. The technical view sees efficiency as the ratio between inputs and outputs, and holds that efficiency as such is in a trade-off with equity, although this trade-off can be minimized. The Pareto view equates efficiency with a government＇s governing capacity, that is, the capacity of a government to pursue all primary goals simultaneously. According to this view, there is no trade-off between efficiency and equity, because efficiency is just a secondary goal of a government, and the most important thing a government has to do is to make efficiency instrumental in the realization of primary goals like equity.