分权化及其对公共治理的启示——以亚洲四小龙的教育政策改革为例

Decentralization and Its Implications for Public Governance:Education Reforms in the Four East Asian Tigers

本文尝试探讨在不同社会背景下,如何通过政策的'同质化一异质化',寻找一个国家力量和国家职能范围之间的最佳平衡点,从而达致'善治'。同质化是指通过制度和治理架构的变迁以改变国家能力的一种全球趋势,而异质化则是指各地因应这些全球性转变所作的调整。本文以亚洲四小龙(中国香港、新加坡、韩国、中国台湾)的教育分权化为例,探讨这两个相反的概念对公共治理的意义。这四个新兴工业国家和地区可以被分成两组。一为韩国和中国台湾,这两个处于政治民主过渡期的社会,政治因素对教育分权化有着明显而重要的影响;一为中国香港和新加坡,在这两地,教育分权化和相关的改革被视作管理主义化和市场化的一部分。

This article considers the search for the optimal balance between state strengths and the scope of state functions for 'good governance' as the formation of a homogenization-heterogenization matrix of policy initiatives in different societies.Homogenization refers to a global tendency for institutional changes and governance framework to change state capacity,while heterogenization refers to the local adaptation of these global transformations.The article takes educational decentralization as an example of policy initiatives to assess and analyze the significance of the two opposite poses in the four East Asian tigers(Hong Kong,Singapore,Korea,and Taiwan).It suggests that these four societies can be seen as two clusters.One comprises South Korea and Taiwan.In these two new democracies,political factors are considered to be the main factors affecting the developments of educational decentralization in the two societies.Another consists of Hong Kong and Singapore where education reforms are largely parts of managerialization of public administration and marketization of public services.However,the two societies face the question of how to maintain sufficient 'stateness' in the process of decentralization.The article concludes by arguing that achieving the balance of 'stateness' is the key to success in state-building.