The New Governance and the Tools of Public Action: An Introduction
The New Governance and the Tools of Public Action: An Introduction
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新治理和公共行动工具：简介
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发表时间：
2011
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通讯作者：
L. Salamon
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作者：
L. Salamon
在经济生活中，理性的社会行动、计划、改革的可能性——简而言之，解决问题的可能性——不取决于我们在神话般的宏伟选择中做出的选择，而主要取决于我们在特定的社会技术中做出的选择……在西方世界，理性社会行动的核心是技术，而不是“主义”。全球经济的深远发展使我们重新审视有关政府的基本问题：它应该扮演什么角色，它能做什么，不能做什么，以及如何最好地做到这一点。(2)引言：无人注意的革命一场关于如何处理公共问题的根本性的重新思考目前正在全世界范围内进行。(3)由于公众对政府项目的成本和效率的不满，以及对自由主义经济理论的新信仰，人们对公共部门机构的能力甚至动机提出了严肃的问题。长期以来，这种质疑一直是美国政治话语的主要内容，如今也蔓延到了世界其他地区，引发了一股非同寻常的改革洪流。(4)因此，从美国和加拿大到马来西亚和新西兰的政府都面临着重塑、缩小规模、私有化、下放权力、下放权力、放松管制和分层、接受绩效测试和外包的挑战。这种改革浪潮的基础是一套理论，这些理论将政府机构描绘成结构严密的等级制度，与市场力量和有效的公民压力隔绝，因此可以自由地为官僚的个人和机构利益服务。(5)即使是在改革者中为政府辩护的人也认为，我们目前背负着错误类型的政府，工业时代的政府“有着迟缓的、中央集权的官僚机构，对规章制度的痴迷，以及等级森严的命令链”。(6)然而，在这些描述中，很大程度上被忽视的是，现代政府的结构已经在多大程度上体现了这些改革所寻求实现的许多特征。事实上，在过去的五十年里，在美国公共部门的运作中发生了一场技术革命，而且越来越多地在世界其他地区发生；但这是一场很少有人认识到的革命。这场革命的核心是一场根本性的变革，不仅在政府行动的范围和规模上，而且在其基本形式上。公共行动的工具、用于解决公共问题的工具或手段已经大量增加。早期的政府活动主要局限于政府官僚直接提供商品或服务，而现在则包括了一系列令人眼花缭乱的贷款、贷款担保、赠款、合同、社会监管、经济监管、保险、税收支出、代金券等等。让这种发展变得特别重要的是，每一种工具都有自己的操作程序，自己的技能要求，自己的交付机制，实际上是自己的“政治经济学”。因此，每一种都将自己的“扭曲”赋予体现它的程序的操作。例如，贷款担保依靠商业银行向合格的借款人提供援助信贷。在这个过程中，商业贷款官员成为政府贷款计划的执行者。由于私人银行家有自己的世界观、自己的决策规则和自己的优先事项，如果让他们自己决定，他们可能会制定出与政府直接贷款（更不用说直接的政府补助）截然不同的项目。也许最重要的是，像贷款担保一样，许多这些“新”工具都有一个重要的共同特征：它们都是高度间接的。他们严重依赖各种各样的“第三方”——商业银行、私立医院、社会服务机构、工业公司、大学、日托中心、其他各级政府、金融家、建筑公司等等——来提供公共资助的服务，并追求授权的公共目的。…
In economic life the possibilities for rational social action, for planning, for reform--in short, for solving problems--depend not upon our choice among mythical grand alternatives but largely upon choice among particular social techniques ... techniques and not "isms" are the kernel of rational social action in the Western world. (1) Far-reaching developments in the global economy have us revisiting basic questions about government: what its role should be, what it can and cannot do, and how best to do it. (2) INTRODUCTION: THE REVOLUTION THAT NO ONE NOTICED A fundamental re-thinking is currently underway throughout the world about how to cope with public problems. (3) Stimulated by popular frustrations with the cost and effectiveness of government programs and by a new-found faith in liberal economic theories, serious questions are being raised about the capabilities, and even the motivations, of public-sector institutions. Long a staple of American political discourse, such questioning has spread to other parts of the world as well, unleashing an extraordinary torrent of reform. (4) As a consequence, governments from the United States and Canada to Malaysia and New Zealand are being challenged to reinvent, downsize, privatize, devolve, decentralize, deregulate and de-layer themselves, subject themselves to performance tests, and contract themselves out. Underlying much of this reform surge is a set of theories that portrays government agencies as tightly structured hierarchies insulated from market forces and from effective citizen pressure and therefore free to serve the personal and institutional interests of bureaucrats instead. (5) Even defenders of government among the reformers argue that we are saddled with the wrong kinds of governments at the present time, industrial-era governments "with their sluggish, centralized bureaucracies, their preoccupation with rules and regulations, and their hierarchical chains of command." (6) Largely overlooked in these accounts, however, is the extent to which the structure of modern government already embodies many of the features that these reforms seek to implement. In point of fact, a technological revolution has taken place in the operation of the public sector over the past fifty years both in the United States and, increasingly, in other parts of the world; but it is a revolution that few people recognize. The heart of this revolution has been a fundamental transformation not just in the scope and scale of government action, but in its basic forms. A massive proliferation has occurred in the tools of public action, in the instruments or means used to address public problems. Where earlier government activity was largely restricted to the direct delivery of goods or services by government bureaucrats, it now embraces a dizzying array of loans, loan guarantees, grants, contracts, social regulation, economic regulation, insurance, tax expenditures, vouchers, and much more. What makes this development particularly significant is that each of these tools has its own operating procedures, its own skill requirements, its own delivery mechanism, indeed its own "political economy." Each therefore imparts its own "twist" to the operation of the programs that embody it. Loan guarantees, for example, rely on commercial banks to extend assisted credit to qualified borrowers. In the process, commercial lending officers become the implementing agents of government lending programs. Since private bankers have their own world-view, their own decision rules, and their own priorities, left to their own devices they likely will produce programs that differ markedly from those that would result from direct government lending, not to mention outright government grants. Perhaps most importantly, like loan guarantees, many of these "newer" tools share an important common feature: they are highly indirect. They rely heavily on a wide assortment of "third parties"--commercial banks, private hospitals, social service agencies, industrial corporations, universities, day-care centers, other levels of government, financiers, construction firms, and many more--to deliver publicly financed services and pursue authorized public purposes. …