中国政府治理模式的选择与转换:一个正式模型

Choice and Transformation of China’s Governance Modes:A Formal Model

本文利用"中央政府(委托方)—中间政府(管理方)—基层政府(代理方)"三层级委托代理模型对政府治理的"控制权"理论进行正式构造。通过设计各类治理合约,本文将治理模式转化为目标控制权、激励分配权与检查验收权在政府层级间的配置组合,进而从任务属性的视角对中国政府治理模式的选择机制和转换条件进行分析。研究发现,政策执行过程中的任务难度、验收难度与任务风险三类任务属性及对应的权衡机制决定了该任务在不同治理模式下的组织成本,从而影响最优治理模式的选择。本文的理论模型为研究中国政府治理过程提供了统一框架,并对现实中各类任务治理模式的选择提供了合理解释。

This study uses a three-level principal-agent model of central government(principal)-intermediate government(manager)-local government(agent)to construct a theory of control rights in governance. By designing various governance contracts,we first translate governance modes into allocations of goal-setting rights, incentive distribution rights, and inspection and assessment rights, and then analyze the mechanisms of choice and conditions of change in governance modes. The study provides a detailed description of three typical governance modes of tight-coupling,administrative-contracting,and loose-coupling. Minimization of organizational cost is taken as the standard to find the optimal contract and its corresponding organizational cost expression under each governance mode. Through numerical simulation technology,we calculate and compare the cost of each governance mode under the complete task attributes combination and then obtain the optimal governance mode selection rule for different task attributes. We find that the three task attributes(implementation difficulty,inspection difficulty,and task risk)and the corresponding cost-benefit tradeoff calculation determine the organizational cost of different governance modes,thereby affecting the selection of the optimal governance mode. The tight-coupling mode is generally suitable for tasks with high risks,the administrativecontracting mode prefers tasks with high implementation difficulty,and the loosecoupling mode has cost advantages over tasks with low inspection difficulty. This study expands the control rights theory and its application into the field of governance. It offers a unified framework of China’s governance process and a credible explanation of the different governance modes in existence.