儿童主任制度执行困境与出路:从街头官僚视角对26位儿童主任的质性分析

Execution Dilemma and Solutions of the Child Director System:A Qualitative Analysis of 26 Child Directors from the Perspective of Street-Level Bureaucracy

儿童主任制度从2010年试点到2019年全面实施,至今已取得一定成效,但制度“变通”执行甚至消极执行普遍存在。本文引入街头官僚理论视角,基于参与观察及对26名儿童主任的深入访谈,从制度执行人的微观角度自下而上分析儿童主任制度的执行状况,探讨儿童主任制度设计与实践之间的内在张力。根据自由裁量空间和责任范围大小两个维度,构建权力和责任分析的二维框架,将儿童主任分为四种类型并作行动逻辑分析。分析结果表明,多数儿童主任的行动策略符合街头官僚“激励不足、变通执行、规则依赖和一线弃权”的行动逻辑,出现职责不清、缺乏认同、共谋应付、有名无实、有而不专等多种问题,严重影响执行效果。针对上述问题,本文建议从制度设计上完善儿童主任的权责规定、从制度实践上优化控制体系,以实现权力与责任、规则执行与自由裁量之间的平衡。

Since 2010,“Child Priority”has been incorporated into China’s national strategy,and China’s child welfare system is gradually transitioning from basic protection to categorized protection,from material security to material&service security,and from supplementary welfare to moderate universal welfare.In this context,the Child Director System has emerged.The Child Director System originated from the pilot project of the“China Child Welfare Demonstration Program”launched in 2010 by the Ministry of Civil Affairs in collaboration with UNICEF and the China Philanthropy Research Institute.The project aimed to assist vulnerable children affected by HIV/AIDS and conducted experiments in 120 villages across 12 counties in five provinces in central and western China to establish child welfare directors.The Child Director System was thus initiated.In 2019,the Ministry of Civil Affairs and others issued a document requiring village(community)committees to appoint“child directors”specifically responsible for child care and protection services.As of the end of 2021,there were a total of 651000 child directors in China,and the Child Director System has been fully implemented nationwide.According to our investigation,child directors are generally appointed from within the village or community,often held by the chairperson/director of the Women's Federation or the civil affairs officer,and in some rare cases,by the village head or PCP secretary,with only a few places having dedicated fulltime child directors,such as Feidong County in Anhui Province.Since the pilot phase in 2010 until full implementation in 2019,China’s Child Director System has achieved certain results,but there is a widespread issue of flexible or even passive implementation of the system.This article adopts the perspective of Street-Level Bureaucracy Theory to analyze the implementation of the Child Director System from the micro perspective of the implementers,exploring the inherent tensions between the design and practice of the Child Director System.The article aims to identify the root causes of difficulties in implementing the system and propose corresponding strategies.The research methodology of this article is qualitative research,based on participant observation and case interviews.Through textual analysis,it seeks to identify commonalities and individual characteristics of child directors in different regions to gain an overall understanding of the current status of the implementation of the Child Director System.The study focuses on 26 child directors in Zhejiang Province and other areas,including village committee officials such as Women's Federation chairpersons who also serve as child welfare workers and grassroots child welfare workers managing Left-Behind Children's Homes.Based on the dimensions of discretion space and scope of responsibility,the article constructs a twodimensional framework for power and responsibility analysis,dividing child directors into four types and conducting an analysis of their action logic.The investigation reveals that child directors consistently face conflicts between representing the government from the top-down and meeting the demands of citizens from the bottom-up in the process of welfare delivery and institutional implementation.As street-level bureaucrats,they exercise discretionary power in top-down implementation and reflect citizen demands from the bottom-up,seeking a balance between the two.The analysis results indicate that the action strategies of most child directors conform to the action logic of street-level bureaucrats,characterized by inadequate incentives,flexible implementation,reliance on rules,and abstention at the frontline,leading to various problems such as unclear responsibilities,lack of identification,collusion to cope,symbolic actions without substance,and lack of specialization,which severely affect the effectiveness of implementation.To address these issues,the article suggests improving the definition of rights and responsibilities of child directors in the system design and optimizing the control system in institutional practice to achieve a balance between power and responsibility and between rule execution and discretionary power.