Analysis of Extra-Systemic Supply of Public Goods in Township Areas

Author: Li Bin
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-08-01
Features: This book provides some useful ideas and suggestions for solving China's "three rural issues" (agriculture, rural areas, and farmers), building rural grassroots governance, ensuring rural stability, especially for defining the fiscal functions of townships, the division of central and local affairs and financial powers, establishing public finance, deepening rural tax and fee reforms, addressing the severe weakening of administrative capacity in current township governments, and fostering positive interactions between the government and citizens. It offers practical reference value and certain theoretical significance for understanding the administrative process of China's township governments, particularly the fiscal operation process. In summary, it is an outstanding doctoral dissertation with considerable academic level.
This book applies public finance theory and conducts empirical research on the history, current status, problems, formation mechanisms, and future institutional arrangements of extralegal supply of public goods in Chinese townships through case studies. The research shows that establishing and improving township public finance is key to preventing townships from seeking extralegal financial sources. Case studies in the book demonstrate that, under insufficient intralegal fiscal resources, townships seeking extralegal supply of public goods lead to a series of issues, primarily including: lack of fairness, life cycle crises, rural burdens, rural collective incidents, officials' performance-driven tendencies, insufficient legitimacy, negative externalities, and paradoxes in supply. The research reveals that the extralegal supply of public goods in townships has led to a series of social problems, which have become the main issues in the operation of township governments and, in fact, the focal point of rural social conflicts.