✪ Ouyang Jing
School of Finance, Taxation and Public Administration, Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics
Recently, a series of social hot events have repeatedly stimulated the public's nerves, and the county governance dilemma behind them has once again become prominent.
This paper is based on an in-depth investigation of a typical county and reveals the deep problems of current county governance. The author believes that county governance itself is a systematic project, and it is necessary to clarify the various "agent" roles that play different roles in the county environment. From the perspective of a living activist, the article analyzes the activists and their interrelationships such as officials, businessmen,, nail households, and ordinary people in a county power lake.
The author points out that only by fully analyzing the power collision, interest alliance and power balance between activists can we grasp the crux of county governance. For a period of time, some officials were separated from the common people, and formed a profit-sharing order with the goal of seeking public resources with the strong local groups such as merchants and. The dual measures of anti-corruption and anti-gang crime implemented in recent years are aimed at breaking the alliance of county interests formed by powerful groups and rebuilding a cooperation mechanism based on public rules and public interests. If county governance cannot be modernized, it will profoundly restrict the modernization of the national governance system and governance capabilities.
This article was originally published in "Cultural Perspectives", originally titled "The Dynamic Structure in the Governance System: The Perspective of the County", which is hereby compiled and distributed for your consideration.
Activist structure in the governance system:
A county perspective
Since the 18th National Congress, the party and the state have implemented the strategy of comprehensively and strictly governing the party and governing the country according to law, which will help optimize the governance structure of the county; the special struggle against organized crime and evil that the state began to implement in 2018 is reshaping the basic structure of grass-roots governance. The dual measures of anti-corruption and anti-gang crime are intended to break the alliance of interests formed by powerful groups in the county governance structure, so as to reconstruct the relationship between the county governance structure and establish a cooperation mechanism based on public rules and public interests. Starting from the analysis of the structural relationship between activists and activists in the county, this article will explore the pertinence of anti-corruption and anti-gang crime, and outline the basic problems facing the modernization of grass-roots governance.
At present, most studies regard the structure of the main level of government governance as an abstract or holistic party and government organization or social organization, rather than a specific actor. Although some empirical studies have also focused on governance subjects with specific behaviors and role characteristics, such as governments as "entrepreneurs" or "resource takers", or new gentry and clans as "rulers". But these studies focus on the roles and behaviors of individual governance agents, rather than on the structural relationships between governance agents.
▍ What is the agent perspective?
The activist perspective is an analytical path different from the holistic perspective, which has only been introduced into the study of local government governance in recent years. The advantage of the activist's perspective is to separate the county and township leading cadres as a structural influence force to emphasize the initiative and initiative of this group to make decisions and implement policies at the county level, which to a large extent breaks through the overall and abstract image of the main body of governance, so that we can see the specific and subject consciousness of the "strategic group" and the "multiple image" of government officials within the government.
There is no doubt that county and township leading cadres, especially county party secretaries who are the number one local government leaders, play an important role and role in county politics, economic development and social governance. But if we include other agents who influence the governance of county governments into the analysis field, we will find that the agents in county governance will not only have county and township leading cadres, but also other agents such as businessmen,, nail households, and ordinary people. Therefore, if we can pay attention to the different agents in the governance of the county government, then the structural research on the main body of the county government governance will not only become more comprehensive, objective and full, but also facilitate the perspective of the structural relationship between the agents of government governance, the application of rules and the ability to govern, and other problems that must be faced and solved in government governance practice.
In the tradition of qualitative research methods, the author conducted fieldwork in central D County in the summer of 2012-2018. The cases in the article are all from the author's observations and experiences in D County.
▍ County: The power of the activists
Judging from the influential actors in the current county governance, there are at least the following types of activists, namely leaders, ordinary cadres, businessmen,, nail households, and ordinary people.
(1) Leadership
Leadership refers to leading cadres at the county and section levels with real power, that is, "leading cadres" commonly referred to as grass-roots cadres, specifically including county-level leaders in the four sets of county leading bodies (county party committees, governments, people's congresses, and cppcc committees) and leaders at the section level of townships, towns, and county departments. These leading cadres generally have decision-making power and final disposition power over county policies and specific matters. That is to say, the leadership here does not include deputy posts and other deputy section level cadres in the county who do not have substantive powers. Because in a county-level government organization, its hierarchy is not significant, and the deputy post has almost no control over specific affairs, mainly the implementers of specific policies and the operators of specific affairs. Therefore, the leadership mentioned here is different from the "strategic group" mentioned by Haibele and others, because the "strategic group" covers all the deputy section level cadres. Rather, as Fan Hongmin said, "Leadership is the person who plays a leading role in the organization, and the person who uses various influences to lead, guide or encourage subordinates to strive to achieve goals."
(2) Ordinary cadres
Ordinary cadres refer to the implementers and operators of county policies and specific affairs, mainly those general deputy section level cadres and ordinary public servants who do not have the final decision and disposal power over policies and affairs. In fact, in the actual operation and specific life of the county, it is easy to distinguish between leaders and ordinary cadres.
First of all, leaders have the right to control finances, personnel affairs, and general affairs, often have a certain hidden income, and their living standards are higher than those of ordinary cadres.
Second, the biggest difference between leaders and ordinary cadres is that they have different positions of their career goals.
In our interviews, the leader's position on himself is "doing business", that is, doing something visible and tangible in the local or local department to gain the affirmation of the superior leader and show his ability and achievement. Even for top-down policies, leaders are more active than the average cadre, always thinking about how to creatively complete tasks ahead of schedule. Ordinary cadres are different, they give themselves the position of "doing work", that is, the work is only their own rice bowl, and they can do their part well, so they are not as active and active as leaders. It is precisely for this reason that leaders who want to "do their careers" always complain that their subordinates are not active in their work and that people are superfluous, and when they promote their work, they mainly rely on young people with good quality and want to make progress.
For example, in our investigation, we found that many ordinary cadres in the county have part-time jobs, or do their own business outside; or speculate in online stocks; or run their own online stores. According to our interviews and observations, among the ordinary cadres at the grass-roots level, only a small number of people live on their own salaries and income, and in their own words, most of them have their own "small business" outside of their normal work, such as opening various training courses, contracting forest farms, mountain farms, operating local souvenirs, and operating certain commodities through WeChat and the Internet.
(3) Businessmen
Merchants are those large businessmen who have strong capital and extensive contacts and have influence on the economic, political and social governance of the county, so as to distinguish them from those who engage in general and daily economic activities. Because the county society is relatively small, people with heads and faces are familiar with the public. For example, there are three famous local businessmen in D County, all of whom are real estate owners in the county, and they all make their fortunes from real estate, and finally involve hotels, transportation and tourism development. The main characteristic of businessmen is to "take projects", that is, to undertake various government projects, including roads, bridges, parks, squares and other infrastructure construction projects and real estate development projects, as well as other projects involving agriculture, forestry, water, electricity, tourism, environmental protection and so on.
Whether it is a top-down project or a project developed by the county government itself, it must eventually take root in the county society. Therefore, the county government is the actual operator and "contract issuer" of many projects, and the big businessmen who eventually make the project land are naturally closely related to the government. Since the government is composed of specific leaders and ordinary cadres, the big businessmen are actually closely related to the leaders who have control over the project.
(4)
refer to those who not only have a certain amount of monetary capital, but also have resources of violence, that is, what some scholars call local forces. The reason why mixed-ups can constitute the agents of county governance is because they have a greater impact on the social security of the county and the social governance problems it causes. The main behavioral characteristic of the mixture is "land competition", that is, to win a share of interests in the entertainment industry, transportation industry, construction raw materials, river channels, slaughterhouses, hotels and other industries, or to monopolize one of the industries.
Unlike other activists, the mainly rely on fists and violent threats to get a piece of the county's development, and often involve illegal businesses such as pornography, gambling and drugs. The line between big businessmen and big sometimes becomes blurred, because some big businessmen are transformed from big, that is, those who get rich, wash their hands of gold, invest in legitimate industries, and transform into big businessmen. The in the county are more fixed, because they are all locals, which is what we usually call the ground snake. Some large businessmen, on the other hand, are mobile, are outsiders, and these foreign businessmen generally have the characteristics of flowing with the flow of the main leaders at the county level.
It is worth mentioning that some have become village cadres through the election of the village committee. These village cadres with mixed backgrounds dare to offend people and dare to deal with nail households that are difficult for the grass-roots government to deal with – sometimes using violence, so they are highly valued by the county government. For example, the cadres of D County said that the current villagers are not afraid of grass-roots cadres, but they are afraid of mixed-ups, especially for work such as land requisition and demolition, sometimes it is impossible to rely only on the strength of grass-roots governments, and it is necessary to rely on mixed resources. In other words, the reason why the grass-roots government acquiesces in the participation of the mixed-up in its governance process is precisely because the mix-and-so-a-part can "level" the governance objects of the grass-roots government.
(5) "Nail Household"
Nail households are those who fight the government in order to defend or fight for their rights. The reason why nail households have become one of the main bodies of county governance is that they dare to adopt some unconventional interest appeal methods, thereby interrupting the government's normalized governance order. More importantly, the behavior of nail households generally has a "demonstration" effect, which will trigger a chain reaction, resulting in countless nail households, and ultimately making government governance difficult. If the governance process is to be sustained, governments must do everything they can to pull out these "nails," and a variety of governance technologies will emerge.
From the perspective of county practice, there is a difference between strong nail households and weak nail households. There are three types of strong nail households:
The first is to understand the "big truth" type. Such nail households are good at standing on the moral high ground, using the words of state ideology to reason with grass-roots leaders, and often holding the "People's Daily" or leaders' meeting reports, accusing grass-roots officials from the standpoint of "people's interests", thus showing that their negotiations are justified.
Second, it belongs to the type of bullying. Such nail households themselves or families have certain influences and backgrounds. For example, in the development project along The River Road in County D, it involved an old house that needed to be demolished. It is said that there are many departmental officials in the family of this old house, so the local government has given special care when it comes to compensation for demolition. Even so, the agent in charge of the negotiation kept trying to get more benefits, so much so that the project was interrupted for two years.
The third is the type of person who is particularly bold and cannot afford to lose even a little and not give in. Such nail households not only dare but also dare to confront the government, once they feel that their interests are damaged, they dare to use any way, and they will not give up until they reach the goal. The "street politics" behaviors such as banner-building, slogan-writing, demonstrations, etc., which are often reported in the media, as well as the performance struggles of "the most cattle nail households in history", are mostly in line with the characteristics of the behavior of such nail households.
Unlike the strong nail households, the weak nail households have always been honest and even afraid of the government, and it is a helpless and passive way for them to become nail households. In addition to refusing to sign and refuse to cooperate, the form of resistance of weak nail households generally does not understand the big truth, does not know how to negotiate, and is not good at taking the form of eye-catching confrontation. But once the government is in a hurry (such as enforcing it), they will also "jedi rebel", such as suicide and other extreme ways of resistance. Although the strong nail households will also use extreme methods, but their mentality and the goal of resistance are often different, many strong nail households are fighting is a kind of unconvinced, not convinced, the goal is often mixed with "personal interest maximization", and the struggle of weak nail households is often a helpless, panic mentality of change, and its goal is to seek the most basic survival and living security.
(6) Ordinary people
Ordinary people are those who are large in county governance, but are scattered, weak and focused on how they "live their lives". That is to say, compared with the nail households, most of the ordinary people are peaceful, honest, and follow the flow. The behavior of ordinary people is characterized by a lack of concern for public affairs, a family as the core, and a good life. Although ordinary people do not have a culture of political participation, in daily governance, the silence of ordinary people or their indifference to public rules often lead to the dilemma of county public governance, making it difficult to achieve the public interest.
▍ Power Map: Collision and Contest of Activists
Although the various activists and the practical activities of county governance are interrelated and intertwined, in the governance of the county government, the most influential activists are the leaders of the government as the main body and the nail households and ordinary people with ordinary cadres and government governance objects as the main body. It can even be said that the interaction between the grass-roots government and society is, to a large extent, the interaction between the leaders and ordinary cadres in the county government and other activists in the county governance. Therefore, the relationship between these two major agents constitutes the main structural relationship of the main body of county governance, from which we can also more vividly understand the relationship between the government and society, and between officials and the people.
(1) The relationship between leaders and other activists
1. The relationship between leaders and ordinary people: "out of reach"
Although the county government is the closest front-line government to the ordinary people, we found in the county we investigated that if the ordinary people try to meet with the main leaders of the county party committee and the county government, they must go through at least three doors, the first is the security of the government compound, the second is the glass door with a code at the elevator entrance of the government building, and the third is the iron door of the main office building of the county. The iron gate is usually locked and guarded by the leading secretary. So, for an ordinary group, if they want to meet the main leaders of the county, it is quite a difficult thing.
2. The relationship between the leader and the nail household: "avoid seeing"
It is difficult for ordinary people to see the leader, and if the nail household wants to find the main leader of the county to petition, it is even more difficult, because the leader generally avoids the nail household. For example, in order to avoid those who come to the government compound to petition or visit in groups, the main county leaders rarely enter and exit through the government gate, but take the elevator to the underground garage and leave directly. Although the leadership visit system introduced in 2008 requires the main leaders of the county to visit the masses once a week. However, it was only during important and sensitive periods such as the Olympic Games and the "two sessions" that the visit was received to control the "Beijing visit." Most of the visits in normal seasons are ceremonial, that is, they leave in the interview room for about 1 hour, and are presided over and received by county leaders (most of the people's congresses and CPPCC committees) who are other deputy posts. In short, even in a small county, it is difficult for ordinary people to see the main leaders of the county as secretaries and county chiefs, although they are also grass-roots cadres, but the distance between them and the grass-roots people is quite far.
3. The relationship between leaders and businessmen: "call brothers and brothers"
Unlike ordinary people and nail households, leaders are enthusiastic and even courteous to businessmen. In fact, some of the leader's spare time is spent with businessmen, who eat, play cards, and relax together. After the bus could not be used privately and public funds could not be consumed in 2012, the businessman's car became the leader's private car, and the leader's bill was rushed by the businessman to pay. The relationship between leaders and businessmen seems to be closer. Behind this intimate relationship is often a common bond of interest – the project. Most of the key projects in the county are undertaken by businessmen who are closely related to the leadership. Some projects are almost tailored to these businessmen through the forms of "bid-rigging", "invitation", and "flow-label".
In addition to county leaders, departmental leaders and township leaders who are specific operators of policies within the county are actually closely related to businessmen. In the case of County D we surveyed, for example, most of the many projects of businessmen have leaders involved. For example, for land acquisition and demolition, many leaders are very active, because they have a share of the benefits generated by the project behind the land acquisition. The relationship between leaders and businessmen can also be fully demonstrated and explained from the government's investment promotion work. In the investment documents of the D county government, there is even a wording of "nanny service" for businessmen.
4. The relationship between leadership and assholes: "Love and hate intertwined"
In the county, famous are also famous local businessmen, so those who become big businessmen and leaders are almost also brothers and brothers. Because they can play a role in governance incidents that are difficult for the government to deal with, such as land requisition and demolition, they are praised by leaders as "good at work" and like them. However, because most of the may participate in illegal businesses such as pornography, gambling, and drugs, and often affect the social order due to bullying and hegemony, stimulate social contradictions and lead to people petitioning, thereby increasing the burden of leadership governance, and even causing governance risks, making leaders dissatisfied. Therefore, the leader sometimes has to suppress the in gesture or in actual action to make the civilian population angry.
(2) The relationship between ordinary cadres and other activists
Theoretically, the relationship between ordinary cadres and leaders should be the relationship of "execution and command". But in reality, it is possible that only young people who want to be promoted will truly achieve the will to fully obey the leadership. Although most ordinary cadres will do their part in accordance with the existing rules and regulations, once they need to do something that offends people, such as dealing with nail households, it will be difficult for them to implement according to the wishes of the leaders, but they will adopt a negative and sluggish attitude. Because ordinary cadres are unwilling to offend people in their hearts, and even more unwilling to clash with the people and nail households, ordinary cadres will not do what they generally offend people. At this point, the are about to play. The reason why the relationship between the mixed-ups and the leaders and ordinary cadres is relatively close is because when the ordinary cadres are not active, the are willing to rush to the front line to support the cause of the leaders. Therefore, in grassroots governance, are used to offend people, because are not afraid of offending people.
A large reason why ordinary cadres have become sluggish and do not "offend" the people and nail households is that under the development of public opinion and online media, the informal behavior of ordinary cadres can easily lead to public condemnation or bear corresponding responsibilities. Out of consideration for self-interest and professional safety, the rational behavior of ordinary cadres is to "not do things", or to be a "good old man" who does not offend people. Therefore, the relationship between ordinary cadres at the grass-roots level and ordinary people is no longer as tense as it was in the era of taxes and fees, but is "polite" and no one can offend anyone. Ordinary cadres who are unwilling to actively do things naturally have fewer contacts with the grass-roots people, and the relationship has become correspondingly estranged, with neither tense bad relations nor intimate good relations.
▍ Non-reciprocity of the agent rule
In theory, governance is often considered "a means or mechanism for dealing with a wide range of issues and conflicts, in which governments and various non-governmental actors usually negotiate to reach mutually satisfactory and mutually binding decisions". But in reality, if there are no principles and standards of right and wrong based on consensus and public interest, then the inevitable result is that "children who cry have milk to eat." As a result, those who have a relationship and a background, or who are particularly bold, dare and good at confronting the government, are often able to break through basic public norms and achieve their goals according to special policies and rules.
The dilemma of grassroots governance at the county level is that once the agents of all parties lose their basic consensus and "publicity" in the use of rules and resources, then "good governance" based on cooperation is difficult to achieve. Taking land requisition and demolition at the county level as an example, those strong nail households that do not act according to the rules can often be treated with special policies or special rules, thus becoming the group that benefits the most in the process of county urbanization. Because county governments often break through the norm and use the logic of "leveling" and "getting it done" to deal with those strong nail households that do not act according to the convention. For example, county governments will take the form of lureing benefits such as giving benefits such as enjoying the minimum guarantee and special relief funds to buy off these powerful groups who do not abide by public rules.
Once the logic of "leveling" and "getting it done" and "tacticalism" becomes the normal technology in county governance, grassroots governance will increasingly lose its public and political nature. For example, the county government is very strong in front of the weak activist, and is a domineering strong person; but in front of the strong activist, it is very weak, a weak person who cringes. This kind of bullying and fear of hard posture and behavior will exacerbate the individualization and arbitrariness of the use of grass-roots governance technology and governance rules, resulting in the loss of due authority and ability of county governments in public governance. More importantly, the depoliticization of county government governance will in turn further exacerbate the imbalance in the grass-roots governance structure and governance capacity, and then aggravate the imbalance between the supply of grass-roots public goods and the distribution of public benefits, which will undoubtedly aggravate the damage to the image of the grass-roots government with a very low degree of recognition.
▍ Profit-sharing order: The political consequences of power imbalances
When discussing the governance structure at the normative level, researchers generally emphasize multi-center, multi-subject network governance, and believe that such a governance structure is conducive to realizing the interests of various actors. More importantly, this theory of normative governance structure often implies the value orientation of democratization of governance, thus theoretically making "government governance" different from "government management". However, in concrete practice, the premise of achieving a balance of interests and democratization among the activists is that all the activists are equal in terms of scale, resources and energy, otherwise it will be difficult to achieve equilibrium in negotiations or games between the activists.
A distinctive feature of the practice of county government is the non-equilibrium of the main structure of governance, that is, leading cadres are separated from the general public and have a closer relationship with strong groups such as businessmen and. For example, County D has also adopted a "land-finance-finance" trinity of urbanization development model. But behind this model there are specific agents, namely the government that acquires land finance and the businessman who owns financial capital. Land revenues become the basis of the common interests of both. From this point of view, the integration of "land-finance-finance" is essentially an alliance of interests between the county government and businessmen. The reason why the previously unpopular mixed-up can join this alliance of interests is because the land must go through the process of land acquisition and demolition before development, and the mixed-and-mixed people play an important role in this link and can effectively deal with the "nail households" that have emerged due to land acquisition and demolition.
Because the land income is very prominent, the behavior of the government and the powerful group as an activist is also extremely fully expressed, and the characteristics of its interest alliance are also more prominent. But in fact, governments and powerful groups form alliances in terms of land yields, and they also form alliances in other areas of public interest. For example, a large number of transfer payment resources reach the county government from top to bottom in the form of comprehensive development projects such as agriculture, forestry, tourism, and the environment, which provides huge resource space and conditions for the local strong groups to ally with the county government. All kinds of projects are contracted by strong groups, and grass-roots government leading cadres also benefit from them, and form a gray chain of interests with strong groups, forming a joint interest alliance to obtain public resources. Once the alliance of interests between the government and the strong groups is formed, it is easy for the government to favor the strong groups in the market behavior and damage the rights and interests of ordinary people, and the strong groups are willing to assist the government to "balance" various unstable factors, and the grass-roots governance structure is thus unbalanced.
The direct consequence of the imbalance between the alliance of interests and the governance structure is the formation of a "profit-sharing order" aimed at seeking public resources, which in turn leads to the "involution of grass-roots governance". Therefore, if we do not analyze the structural characteristics of each agent in governance, and only discuss the main structure of governance from a normative point of view, it is easy to think that the pluralism and multi-level nature of governance subjects mean the transformation of single power to multiple powers, which means the democratization of governance, so that we cannot see the rules and resources in it, as well as the structural characteristics between governance subjects, government governance capabilities and corresponding social order issues.
Therefore, from the analysis of the county governance agents and the dynamic structure, we can clearly see that the optimization of the relationship between the county governance structure is the reshaping of the image and credibility of the grass-roots government. This is also the specific goal of the anti-corruption and anti-gang crime work since the 18th National Congress, and its ultimate goal is to improve the governance ability of grass-roots governments in the complex interest structure of modern society.
This article was originally published in the April 2019 issue of Culture, originally titled "The Dynamic Structure in the Governance System: A County Perspective." Welcome to share personally, media reprint please contact the copyright owner.