郡县制国家现代化:中央政府如何扩大公共事务治理职能

The Modernization of the Junxian State:How Does the Chinese Central Government Expand Its Function of Governance in Public Affairs

郡县制国家的传统职能是"管人",但是在当代,为了适应现代世界,需要加强和完善"管事"的职能。然而,加强"管事"的职能遇到的一大障碍,是"管事"与"管人"通常难以分开,带来管事与管人的冲突。在全国性公共事务上,面对管事与管人的冲突,郡县制国家的一种改革方向,即建立中央统一管理与地方属地管理相结合的体制,既扩大中央政府的治理职能,同时又发挥纵向约束机制的作用,从而能改善全国性公共事务治理。此种中央统一管理与地方属地管理相结合的体制,通常不是中央政府事先设计出来的,而是在改革过程中,经由中央政府与地方政府的策略性互动过程,逐渐建立起来的。因此,郡县制国家蕴含着一种潜力,即在公共事务治理上,包括地方公共事务和全国性公共事务,可以引入和发挥"纵向约束机制"的作用,使得国家既保持"管人"的基本体制不变,又能提高治理能力。

Governing the people is the traditional function of the authoritarian state in China, but to adapt to the modern world, another function of governing public affairs needs to be strengthened and improved,which is called the modernization of the state system and state capacities. However, these two functions are usually difficult to separate, causing the conflicts between the functions which impede the modernization.This paper argues that the authoritarian state has a reform space for such conflicts on national public affairs.By the combination of centralized management and localized management, the governance of national public affairs is improved through expanding the governance function of central government and functioning the vertical-constraint mechanism. And also, such combination is not pre-designed, and sometimes even deviates from the central government’ s initial goal. Instead, it is gradually established through the strategic interaction between central and local governments. Therefore, the authoritarian state in China has the potential to improve the governance capacity without changing the basic system of governing the people, which is introducing vertical-constraint mechanism on the governance of public affairs,including local and national.