Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: The Aggregation of Local Preferences: Local Social Policy in China After 1994

政治学博士论文研究：地方偏好的聚合：1994年后中国的地方社会政策

• 批准号: 0819122
• 负责人: Susan Shirk
• 金额: $ 1.2万
• 依托单位: University of California-San Diego
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2008
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2008-08-01 至 2009-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0819122&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Political; Science

Despite rapid economic growth, many people in China still cannot afford to provide for their basic needs such as health and education. The Communist Party leadership in Beijing ("the Center") believes that this problem stems not just from poverty but also from local governments' failure to provide adequate social goods. Local governments in China are responsible for expenditures on all social goods including pensions, health care, and unemployment insurance. Beginning in the 1990s, the Center has pushed for a series of national standards calling for higher social spending at local levels; but its effort has been unsuccessful. Since 1994, when the Center consolidated its political and fiscal control and increased its revenues, the nation?s total social spending has declined and variation in social spending by local governments has increased. Why? The Center may bear some responsibility for these disappointing outcomes by its decision to grant some local governments the right to deviate from the national standard, but not others. After 1994 why did the Center delegate social policymaking authority instead of enforcing uniform levels of high social spending in all localities? More importantly, when local governments were given authority, why did some spend more and others less?Both questions are approached through a model of strategic interaction between the Center and localities. The Center pushes local governments for higher social spending to head off potential social unrests and maintain regime stability; but local officials seek private rents by focusing on economic projects rather than social goods. In this model, the Center?s delegation decision may be influenced by the monitoring costs originated from the hidden information in a locale about what level of spending it will adopt. Specifically, the Center would delegate in cases where the budgetary decisions are decentralized to the county level rather than being made at the provincial level because it is more costly for the Center to learn the hidden information from county-units, and local governments have a substantial information advantage. As for why localities would spend differently, the model suggests that the career incentive of local officials plays a role. In cases where local leaders are more interested in advancing their political careers rather than predating short-term revenues, they would spend more on social goods in order to impress the Center, which holds the ultimate personnel appointment power.The model is tested using a new dataset on the development of China?s local social policy based on local policy yearbooks across all provinces and lower levels of government. In-person interviews with government officials supplement this information. In addition, detailed case studies comparing four provinces provide more information concerning the questions being examined.This study enriches our understanding of China?s opaque political system and the logic of social welfare provisions in non-democracies. The analysis sheds light on why current practice conflicts with the dominant view in the political science literature, which would predict that social spending would be low in non-democracies.

尽管经济快速增长，但中国的许多人仍然负担不起医疗和教育等基本需求。北京的共产党领导认为，这个问题不仅源于贫困，也源于地方政府未能提供足够的社会产品。中国地方政府负责养老、医疗、失业保险等各项社会福利支出。从20世纪90年代开始，该中心推动了一系列国家标准，呼吁在地方层面增加社会支出；但该中心的努力一直未获成功。自1994年中央巩固政治、财政控制和增加收入以来，全国社会总支出下降，地方政府社会支出差异增大。为什么？该中心可能对这些令人失望的结果负有部分责任，因为它决定给予一些地方政府偏离国家标准的权利，但不给予其他地方政府偏离国家标准的权利。1994年后，中央为什么下放社会决策权，而不是在各地统一执行高社会支出水平？更重要的是，当地方政府被赋予权力时，为什么有人花得多，有人花得少？这两个问题都是通过中央和地方之间的战略互动模式来解决的。该中心敦促地方政府增加社会支出，以防止潜在的社会动荡和维护政权稳定；但地方官员通过专注于经济项目而不是社会产品来寻求私人租金。在该模型中，S中心的授权决策可能会受到监控成本的影响，监控成本源于现场关于其将采用何种支出水平的隐藏信息。具体地说，在预算决定下放到县一级而不是省一级的情况下，该中心将下放权力，因为该中心从县单位了解隐藏信息的成本更高，而地方政府拥有相当大的信息优势。至于为什么地方会有不同的支出，该模型表明，地方官员的职业激励起到了作用。如果地方领导人更感兴趣的是推进自己的政治生涯，而不是优先考虑短期收入，他们会在社会产品上花费更多，以打动拥有最终人事任命权的中央。该模型使用一个新的数据集进行了验证，该数据集基于所有省份和下级政府的地方政策年鉴，是关于中国？S地方社会政策发展的。对政府官员的面对面采访补充了这一信息。此外，比较四个省份的详细个案研究提供了更多关于被考察问题的信息，这一研究丰富了我们对中国、S不透明的政治制度以及非民主国家社会福利规定的逻辑的理解。这一分析揭示了为什么当前的做法与政治学文献中的主流观点相冲突，后者预测非民主国家的社会支出将较低。