“新官不理旧事”:基层科层制的人格化现象再思考——H镇征地安置的案例研究

"New Officials Ignore Old Affairs":Rethinking the Personality of the Grassroots Bureaucracy

经典科层制理论将科层制的非人格化视为原则性预设和重要美德,这一预设在理论和经验层面上均激发了大量的讨论。“新官不理旧事”是科层制人格化的具体表现。H镇的案例表明,面对前任官员强力推进的征地安置工作,继任官员采取了“能推就推”、“能拖就拖”和“能压就压”的回避拖延策略,最终导致了基层科层任务的“烂尾”。“权力的基层脱域”能为H镇“新官不理旧事”的发生逻辑提供一定的解释。“权力的基层脱域”由组织目标的个体化、执行程序的情境化和组织问责的模糊化三个要素共同促成,正是以上三个要素使得经典科层制的三大假设遭受挑战,基层科层制的人格化就此发生。在国家治理体系和治理能力现代化的话语体系中,对基层治理体系及其运作过程的深入考察和反思尤为必要。

The objective of this paper is to explain the mechanism of personification in grassroots bureaucracy with a specific case study of"new officials ignore old affairs".A case study on land acquisition and demolition in H town in southern China was carried out in this paper.In the case of Town H,the land acquisition and resettlement work,which was vigorously promoted by the former officials,was ignored by the successor officials,causing the ultimate failure of the grass-roots bureaucratic tasks."The escape of power from the constraints of bureaucracy at the grassroots level"may account for the logic of"new officials ignore old affairs"in Town H.The individualization of organizational goals,the contextualization of execution procedures and the fuzziness of organizational accountability challenge the three assumptions of impersonality of bureaucracy,which leads to the occurrence of personification.However,the key limitation of this study lies in its research scope,which is limited to rural grassroots governance.Due to the different administrative supervision environments,the gener-alisation of the research findings in this study to urban grassroots governance remains to be tested.Therefore it is of great significance to analyse the grassroots governance system for promoting the modernization of China's national governance system and governance capacity.The research of the mechanism of grassroots bureaucratic personification is a necessary prerequisite for improving the performance of grassroots governance.This article systematically analyses the specific manifestations of grassroots bureaucratic personification through the case of"new officials ignoring old affairs"and explains the mechanism of grassroots bureaucratic personification from the theoretical perspective of"the escape of power from the constraints of bureaucracy at the grassroots level".The above two aspects may promote academic understanding of the practical operation of grassroots bureaucratic systems.