政治标尺竞争理论——地方政府的激励效应

Theory of Political Yardstick Competition:The Incentive Effect of Local Governments

标尺竞争理论研究的问题是:一个委托人如何设立最优的激励机制,使多个代理人之间产生良性竞争,以利于委托人的目标最大化。这一理论不仅适用于政府管制和购买的研究,也适用于政治科学与公共管理领域中有关政府及其官员竞争的研究,后者被称为'政治标尺竞争理论'。政治标尺竞争拓展了基于投票实施公共问责的传统理论,基于相对绩效而非绝对绩效对官员(政治代理人)进行绩效考评,极大地降低了政治委托代理关系中的信息不对称程度,优化了政治家和官员的激励机制,改善了公共管理和社会政策的绩效,有助于提升总体社会福利水平,对于公共管理和社会治理的现代化极为重要。本文详细考察了政治标尺竞争理论的产生、发展情况,着重梳理了该理论在近年来的新进展,在此基础上,对该理论的未来发展进行了展望。

What the theory of yardstick competition(YC)seeks to study is how a principal should optimize the incentive mechanism to promote benign competition among agents to maximize the utility of the principal.This theory applies not only to studies on government regulations and procurement,but also to the studies on competition among governments and politicians in the political science and public administration,which is called the theory of political yardstick competition(PYC).PYC has broadened the traditional theory of accountability based electoral procedure by evaluating the politicians on the basis of their relative performance rather than absolute performance.PYC thus would greatly reduce information asymmetry in the political principalagent relationships and help to improve the overall performance of public managements and social policies.This paper offers a systematic examination of the origins and development of the PYC theory,mainly focusing on its latest progress in recent years,after which the discussion of the prospect of the PYC theory is followed.