Research On Blame Avoidance And Its Generation Logic Of Primary-level Government In COVID-19 Prevention And Control

Since the outbreak of COVID-19,accountability system has been an important tool to promote the implementation of epidemic prevention and control responsibilities at various levels.Party committees,governments and discipline commissions at all levels have held accountable for various dereliction of duty in epidemic prevention and control,demonstrating a powerful deterrent effect.However,with the sudden rise of accountability pressure,followed by the emergence of various ways to evade the responsibility,blame avoidance of primary-level government began to breed and spread.The behavior of blame avoidance,as the peculiar behavior of government officials in the process of fulfilling responsibility,has gradually evolved into a common phenomenon during the epidemic,which has attracted broad attention.According to the development status and implementation of the accountability system under the background of the epidemic,as well as the different behavior manifestations and strategy types of blame avoidance,this study,based on the reality of primary-level,proposed an analysis framework of “institution-structure-context” from the perspective of the organizational neo-institutionalism,analyzed the formation mechanism of behaviors of blame avoidance,and proposed relevant governance paths.Institution,structure and context together shape blame-avoiding behavior.From the perspective of the institution,the high level of accountability pressure,the unreasonable assessment and evaluation system,and the inefficient operation of the incentive and fault tolerance and correction mechanism have spawned the tendency of the primary-level government to avoid responsibility.From the perspective of structure,the power and responsibility asymmetry and information asymmetry between the upper and lower government form the space for primary-level government to avoid responsibility.From the perspective of context,the uncertainty risk of the epidemic and the pressure of public opinion further strengthened the motivation of primary-level government to avoid responsibility.At the same time,it should be noted that the particularity of epidemic prevention and control work has distorted the focus of primary-level work and the awareness of primary-level cadres to some extent,making primary-level governments fall into a predicament of “unconscious avoidance of responsibility”.The interaction between institution,structure,context and actor’s behavior constitutes a complete logical chain of behavior,thus generating different strategy choices and behavior patterns.In order to prevent the path dependence of primary-level government avoidance behavior from spreading and spreading,this study proposes the corresponding Institutional reform and policy innovation path from the aspects of system design,regulation of power and responsibility,risk management and so on,so as to prevent and resolve primary-level government avoidance behavior and its negative effects,and achieve the goal of good governance.