Zhejiang University Public Administration 2025 Examination Reference Books, Notes

Compared with the 2024 Kaobo reference book, in 2025, "Government Reform in the Digital Age" will be added

Presentation:

Under the digital reform of the government, what will be the characteristics of government organizations?

Government organizations will mainly show the following characteristics:

(1) The organizational structure of the government is becoming more and more flat

Flattening of the organizational structure refers to the reduction of the management level and the expansion of the management range. The traditional pyramid has many levels and the speed of information transmission is slow, resulting in a much lower decision-making speed. Under the digital reform, it has provided important functional support for the flattening of the organization, such as the pilot work of "provincial management of counties" promoted in various parts of the mainland.

(2) Flexibility of government organizations

The traditional government organization is rigid, the system is tight, and power is almost concentrated in the top leaders, and the grassroots civil servants have almost no independent decision-making power. The flexibility of government organizations mainly refers to the rationalization of the structure of functions and powers, that is, while implementing centralization, the most flexible and maximum decentralization is given to improve the decision-making ability of grassroots civil servants to deal with emergencies.

(3) The dynamics of the boundaries of government organizations

On the one hand, enterprises are stepping into the public sector, taking the establishment of smart cities as an example, under the digital reform, the government actively encourages enterprises to enter the field of public services and join the construction of smart cities; On the other hand, enterprises take the initiative to ask the government to intervene in their internal management, taking emerging technology applications as an example, Alibaba has developed a blockchain technology that mainly requires the government to intervene in the internal supervision of its enterprises.

(4) The organizational structure of the government is becoming more and more flexible and changeable

In the context of digital reform, in order to adapt to the increasingly rapidly changing market environment, the government organizational structure has changed from centralized hierarchy to decentralized hierarchy to flat process organization, and the organizational structure has become more flexible and adaptable, so as to adapt to the changing needs of the people and public interests.

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6. What are the obstacles to regional coordinated development (essentially a problem of "government failure"), and how to break local protectionism? -- Government issues

Conceptual understanding: political tournament model, administrative contracting system

Political Tournament Model: The political tournament system believes that under the centralized political system of the mainland, higher-level officials mainly evaluate and promote lower-level officials based on economic growth, so lower-level officials have a strong incentive to develop the economy in order to be able to obtain political promotion, and local government officials are increasingly regarded as "political people" rather than "economic people".

Administrative contracting system: Administrative contracting system is a concept proposed and perfected by the author Zhou Li'an, which is a mixed form of organizational type, which reflects a kind of contracting relationship embedded between the higher and lower levels of government under the unified centralized authority (central government), and the administrative power is distributed from the central to the grassroots level at all levels, and is outsourced step by step. Each level of government is the contractor of the administrative power at the higher level and the contractor of the lower level of government.

The administrative contracting system is different from the typical Weberian bureaucratic bureaucratic hierarchical system and outsourcing system, and the main differences are in the distribution of administrative power, economic incentives, and internal control.

In terms of the distribution of administrative power, the employer of the administrative contract system has formal authority (personnel power, procuratorial power, guidance power, approval power) and residual control power (non-compliance speed veto power and intervention power), which means that the subordinate and subordinate are not equal in contractual relationship, and the official and senior level will crush people to death. And the specific implementation lies in the fact that the contractor (the successor government) has a certain discretion (Tiangao Emperor Yuan)

In terms of economic incentives, there is a disconnect between the expenditure responsibility and the financial rights of the employer and the contractor. The employer only has to contract out the responsibilities, but it does not match the financial rights and powers that are required by the corresponding needs, and the contractor needs to raise its own funds. Then this will result in the contractor only having a certain amount of residual claim (in terms of profits, if it is enough to pay to the superior, the rest is its own), then the contractor's method of seeking its own money will have a gray area or informal practice to a certain extent, and the employer will turn a blind eye and close one eye.

In terms of internal control, the administrative contracting system emphasizes a result-oriented and personalized sharing of responsibilities. "Territorial management" means "who is in charge, who is responsible", no matter the process of your management, but once something happens, the superiors only look at the results and judge the heroes with the results, which is why we see the problem of the new crown epidemic and the phenomenon that so many officials have masturbated.

1. Obstacles to regional coordinated development:

(1) Inefficiency of government policies

The inefficiency of government policy, i.e., the failure of public decision-making, refers to the fact that government intervention in economic activities does not achieve the desired goal or that the government intervention achieves the desired goal but is costly. First, the so-called public policies formulated by the government do not necessarily fully represent the public interest, for example, the government may introduce non-public welfare policies in order to protect the rights and interests of its own department; Second, the process of public policy formulation requires sufficient and reliable information as the premise, but it is difficult for the government to fully grasp the information scattered among different micro individuals, which can easily lead to mistakes in policy decision-making. Third, there are also some insurmountable obstacles in the implementation of public policies, and any good policy needs to have the prerequisites in the implementation and implementation process, such as good policy implementers, effective communication, necessary policy resources, correct implementation strategies, etc., any of which will lead to policy failure due to improper cooperation or problems.

(2) Inefficiency of government agencies

First, because the government is in a monopoly position in the provision of public services, the government is not only the sole provider of public goods, but also the monopoly producers of public goods in various departments, so there is a lack of competition and it is easy to lack pressure to reduce costs and improve service quality. Second, because government officials spend taxpayers' money and are not bound by property rights, it is easy not to consider the issue of cost when administering, and the annual financial surplus of the department cannot be retained by itself, and reducing the cost cannot bring direct benefits to the department, so all government departments have a tendency to expand the expenditure budget; Third, because it is difficult to measure whether the benefits of the government's provision of public goods and other government actions outweigh the costs by the market mechanism, it is difficult for the government to judge whether its own government actions are efficient from time to time; Fourth, due to the unequal status of the people and government agencies, the asymmetry of information, and the weak supervisory power, government agencies and officials lack effective social supervision and cannot well promote the efficiency of the government.

(3) Government rent-creation, rent-seeking activities and official corruption

First, because rent-seeking excludes competition, it creates economic privileges, hinders the improvement of production efficiency, and excessively intervenes in the allocation of resources, which may make the average social profit unfairly appropriated by a small number of producers. Second, rent-seeking activities waste resources that could have been used for productive activities on activities that are not conducive to increasing social wealth, increasing the non-productive expenditure of the whole society, and its existence directly brings about the inefficiency of resource allocation and unfair distribution. Third, rent-seeking distorts government behavior, and if government officials accept special benefits from corporations, it leads to unfair government behavior and corruption in which officials abuse their power.

and (4) the intrinsic effect of government agencies and the expansion of their scale

The intrinsic effect of government action refers to the phenomenon in which government agencies and their officials seek to achieve their own organizational goals or self-interests while pursuing public interests or social welfare under the pretext of pursuing public interests or social welfare. On the one hand, the internal effect makes government agencies continue to expand the scale of institutions and increase operating costs in non-market interactions, which makes the inefficient allocation of social resources. On the other hand, whether it is to expand the authority of officials themselves or to improve their salaries, it must be achieved by expanding the size of their own departments and raising their budgets. In order to maximize the size and budget of their departments, officials always try to obtain more appropriations from their superiors, and as a result, government spending increases, with the result that while benefiting the officials' departments, public welfare suffers.

2. Measures to break down local protectionism:

(1) Establish and improve the legal system and standardize the behavior of local governments

On the one hand, legislation is passed to establish a system of rules and constraints for local government policy making, and local governments are prohibited from formulating policies and plans with the color of "local protectionism". On the other hand, legislation should be adopted to strictly delineate the scope of government activities, not allowing the government to interfere with the behavior of foreign-funded enterprises and non-local enterprises in local investment and development, and to regulate the behavior of local governments in interfering in and regulating the market.

(2) Develop local markets and take the initiative to introduce competition

Abolish the access restrictions of local governments, develop local markets, encourage and guide foreign enterprises to enter the local market, so as to form a market competition mechanism, further improve the internal motivation of enterprises to reduce costs, improve service quality and product quality, and reduce interference in the allocation of resources in the market.

(3) Comprehensively clean up preferential policies that discriminate against foreign-funded enterprises and non-local enterprises

In the process of building a unified large domestic market, it is necessary to resolutely break down local protectionism and regional barriers, and all localities must not engage in "small but complete" self-small circulation, still less can they engage in regional blockade in the name of "internal circulation", comprehensively sort out all kinds of preferential policies that discriminate against foreign-funded enterprises and enterprises from other places, and at the same time strictly prohibit all localities and departments from issuing negative lists of market access nature.

(4) Break the loopholes in local performance appraisal

Reform of the "GDP-only theory" of local officials and the evaluation criteria of tax performance, some local governments attach too much importance to local GDP and local taxes, which is one of the main causes of local protectionism. Implement an all-round evaluation system for officials in terms of morality, ability, diligence, performance, and integrity, so as to alleviate the factors that cause local protectionism at the root.

【Yuming Exam Preparation Suggestions】

The first stage: guidance on the writing of academic resumes, research plans and other materials

University teachers (university teachers exclusively contracted by Yuming Education) will guide the selection of colleges, majors and supervisors, guide experts in writing recommendation letters and how to contact supervisors, guide how to write research plans and academic resumes during the doctoral period, and technical processing of research results and personal statements. At this stage, you must pay attention to it, especially the research plan, which will take at least 1 month.

Stage 2: Explanation of the focus, scope and proposition trend of the doctoral examination

Explain the trend and characteristics of the proposition, and grasp the scope of review; Explain the main bibliography, establish the framework of the knowledge theory system, and integrate the key knowledge chapters and common test points. Among them, special basic theories and models, hot spots in the past year, etc., are the focus of the written examination every year.

The third stage: the hot topics of the examination and the special topics

Explain how to read the papers of the tutor group and how to read the top academic journals of the discipline to be applied for, which are the focus of the examination, and then sort out the hot issues of the discipline, and analyze the hot issues in combination with the theories learned in the early stage, so as to improve the ability to analyze the problems theoretically. Micro kaoyankaobo8

Stage 4: Explanation and practice of some past questions, explanation of answering skills

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Stage 5: Realistic Simulation Exercises

The latest theoretical frontiers and discipline hotspots combined with practical hotspots will be explained in a high-level and applied manner. Teach candidates how to solve questions, how to arrange the structure, how to highlight innovative points and other answering skills.

Stage 6: Interview Coaching

Instruct students to write self-introductions and subject introductions in English, and conduct simulation exercises for frequently asked questions in previous years.