A Research On The Law System Of Administrative Accountability

The system of administrative accountability is both a theoretical issue in law and a very important practice in society. This dissertation explores its main ideas, functions, theoretical basis, law principles and its responsible law system from should-be perspective; and investigates the actual application in the legislature system of our country from a perspective of actual-being. Based on this, this dissertation proposes some necessary suggestions to improve the system of administrative accountability.This dissertation is divided into six chapters besides an introduction and a conclusion.In Chapter One "The Main Ideas and Functions of Administrative Accountability," I define the terms as the following: The system of administrative accountability is based on democratic politics and the requirement of responsible government; under certain authorities and procedures conferred by specific state departments, the system seeks to find out the legal violations and wrongdoings from the administrative subjects and civil service with a purpose to regulate the relationship, formalize the activity, and improve the efficacy in the application of administrative accountability. As a law system, the administrative accountability consists of such elements as responsible subjects, objects, scope, standard, procedure, and result; its main functions are in the following four aspects: the function to prevent and punish; the function to evaluate and direct; the function to subsidize and redress; and the function to monitor and lead the right direction.In Chapter Two I will discuss the theoretical basis and the precedents of the law system in administrative accountability. I argue that the system of administrative accountability under the constitutional structure not only has a rich theoretical foundation such as the people's sovereignty, responsible politics, and governmental law enforcement; but also has many precedents, direct or indirect, in many other nations' law system. Chapter Three will deal with the principles of administrative accountability and the responsible system in law. It is maintained that in order to fully make use of the possible functionality provided by the system and truly realize the aimed purpose, the principles such as the unity of rights and liability, the accountability based on law, the responsibility by the individual, the penalties implementation, the appropriateness of faults and punishment, the association of punishment and education, the relatedness of penalties and the future work implementation, and the procedural guarantee etc must be observed. The responsibility and liability in law as an inevitable consequence of violating rules and failing in duties usually include ministerial, civil, criminal, and constitutional liability.Chapter Four is an analysis of the current situation of administrative accountability in our country. It holds that in recent years in our country we have done many valuable explorations in the field and have achieved a lot including those such as the responsibility in law enforcement, the liabilities of duty in safety incidents, the liabilities in ministerial wrongdoings, the liability of the responsible officials, and the "high officials accountabilities" in Hong Kong Special Administrative Zone. The main problems can be shown from the following areas: first, the relative leg-behind of the law legislation; second, the vagueness of the power in administration; third, the administrative accountability is usually maintained within the internal administrative structures, the possible function from the coercive force and legislation is not fully developed; fourth, the applicable scope of the system is pretty narrow with its main field in the safety problems and the penalties after the rule violation, neglecting the accountability in the wrongdoings in decision-making, inappropriate appointment of officials and the low efficiency; fifth, the system of accountability is not fully implemented; the common way to do is to use moral responsibility to replace the law liability, to use the administrative responsibility to replace the criminal liability; sixth, influenced by the traditional theory of "special power relationship," the civil service as the accountable objects lack necessary judicial help system and means.Chapter Five suggests some possible ways to construct a functioning law system of administrative accountability. This dissertation proposes that in order to build up an effective law system of administrative accountability, relevant law regulations must be made and enacted so that the subject of administrative accountability, the target, applicable scope, standard, procedure, responsible form and remedy rules can be clearly stipulated and be further enforced. The basic content should include the following: first, the subject of the administrative accountability and its ministerial scope as well as the stipulation on the relationship between the subject and the citizen and the social organization should be clarified; second, the applicable scope of administrative accountability should be extended; third, the criteria of administrative accountability and the legal system of accountability should be unified so that the same legal violation or wrongdoings will incur the same liability; fourth, the procedure of administrative accountability should be fully developed, the redress system of administrative accountability should be well established to ensure the legal rights of the accountable objects.Chapter Six discusses how to optimize the operation environment of administrative accountability. To fulfill this, it requires what I call "One Foundation," which refers to the necessary culture for administrative accountability, and "Two Pre-requirements" which means the clarification of the ministerial responsibility and the publicity of the ministerial affairs. In the same time, the construction of supporting regulations should be followed so that the "Four Associations" (the association of internal and external supervision; the association of state and social supervision; the association of lawful and reasonable supervision; the association of from-top-to-bottom and from-low-to-top supervision) can be realized, and the "Three Transformations" (the transformation from pure post supervision to the complete supervision containing pre, in-action, and post supervision; the transformation from soft supervision to the hard supervision with clear standard and exact procedure; the transformation from the separate supervision which lacks coordination and relation to the supervision of close cooperation with the individual subject's division and responsibility) can be completed, and finally a supervision law system of administration featuring "reasonable structure, scientific allocation, exact procedure, and efficient limitation" will be gradually established.