Research on Administrative System Reform in China

Author: Tao Xuerong
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-08-01
Features: Government reform is an ongoing process, and the development of public administration theory has always been closely linked to the practice of government management. Since public administration was established by Woodrow Wilson in 1887, its paradigms have undergone five overlapping evolutionary stages: the dichotomy of politics and administration — the principles of public administration — public administration as a branch of politics — public administration as a branch of management — public administration as public management. It can be said that reform has always been a perpetual theme in the development of public administration theory. Especially since the early 1980s, in response to the challenges of globalization, informatization, and fierce competition in the international market, a large-scale government reform movement gradually emerged, involving countries worldwide. The traditional or mainstream public administration, which had dominated the field of Western public administration for nearly a century and was hailed as effective, if not the best, faced increasingly severe challenges from the new external environment. Its rigid and inflexible bureaucratic system became increasingly ill-suited to the rapidly changing information- and knowledge-intensive social and economic life. The two major theoretical foundations on which it was built—the political-administrative dichotomy of Wilson and Goodnow and Weber's bureaucratic management theory—could no longer address or resolve the increasingly serious problems and difficulties faced by the government: fiscal crises, the unsustainable nature of social welfare policies, the growing size and inefficiency of government institutions, declining public confidence in government, and the rise of the "government failure" theory. How can governments adapt to this massive wave of reform, overcome the challenges of market failure, and improve efficiency? How can they provide public services more effectively? These are brand-new issues.