Research on Administrative Reform in the United States

Author: Song Shiming
Publisher:
Publication Date: 1999-04-01
Features: The research object of this book is the administrative reforms of the U.S. government since the early 1980s. Through the study of U.S. administrative reforms, it aims to grasp the practical orientation and inherent patterns of contemporary Western administrative reforms as a whole, and to provide certain insights for Chinese administrative reforms. China and the U.S. are at two different stages of modernization, and the specific institutional designs of their administrative reforms during the same period are largely incompatible. However, U.S. administrative reforms can offer valuable conceptual insights for Chinese administrative reforms. This paper adopts a research method that begins with empirical description, followed by normative analysis, moving from the specific to the abstract, and proceeds from division to generalization. Institutional analysis serves as the framework of this study. The findings reveal that market-oriented, deregulation-oriented, and decentralization-oriented approaches have been the three major practical orientations of U.S. administrative reforms since the early 1980s. In essence, these three orientations can be summarized as one orientation: de-bureaucratization. The central argument of this paper is that the U.S. government attempts to explore a new model of administrative management (a new model of government management) adapted to the information society through institutional reforms oriented toward de-bureaucratization. Through the above examination, this paper concludes that, as China and the U.S. are at two different stages of modernization, the specific institutional designs of their administrative reforms during the same period are largely incompatible. However, U.S. administrative reforms can offer valuable conceptual insights for Chinese administrative reforms. Regarding these conceptual insights, the author proposes several perspectives in the final section of this paper that require further deepening and expansion.