制度实施的激励机制:中国食品安全监管困境的一个解释框架

Institution Enforcement and Incentive Mechanisms: An Analytical Framework of Food Safety Regulation Dilemma in China

政府监管体系和监管能力是体现国家治理体系和治理能力现代化的重要组成部分。本文从制度实施的激励视角构建了一个解释中国食品安全监管困境的理论框架,并运用其对食品安全监管者的行为逻辑及策略展开分析。基于四省市食品安全监管人员的访谈,本文认为食品安全监管者的行为是制度环境激励的结果,注意力分配激励、机会主义行为激励、可信承诺软约束激励以及职业晋升的激励机制共同塑造了监管者的行为选择集合。其中,注意力分配与职业晋升激励相互影响,机会主义行为的激励与可信承诺软约束激励互相强化。同时,研究发现,在制度实施过程中,某些制度供给的正向激励转化为了反向激励。研究结论可为制度实施理论及政府监管部门的激励制度设计提供一定的借鉴思路。

The regulation system and capability of governments is the key component of modernization of China’s system and capacity for governance. From the perspective of institutional incentive theory, this paper tries to build a theoretical framework to understand the current situation of food safety problems and the regulators’ behavior strategies in China. On the basis of interviewing food safety regulators across four provinces, the paper proposes that regulators’ behavior choices in the process of enforcing institutions are shaped under the incentive of its institutional environment involving formal and informal institutions. Four incentive mechanisms shape the regulator’s behavior choice, which are incentive mechanisms of attention distribution, opportunistic behavior,softly-restrained commitment as well as career promotion. What needs to be paid attention to is that the incentive mechanisms of attention distribution and career promotion affect each other, and the incentive mechanisms of opportunistic behavior and softly-restrained commitment reinforce each other. It also finds out that the positive incentive brought by institutions may be transformed into the opposite one in the process of enforcing institutions.