The Operational Technology And Institutional Logic Of Local Government Law-based Governance

Local governments are direct promoters of regional economic development,front-line managers of grassroots affairs,and specific executors of laws.They occupy an important position in China’s governance and have made a huge contribution to the modernization of the governance system and capabilities.Governance according to law is a general governance paradigm,which is the internal requirement for local governments to promote administration according to law and build a government governed by law,and it is also an effective way to improve administrative efficiency and create governance performance.Governance in accordance with the law requires local governments to adhere to the order of the rule of law and abide by the authority of the rule of law,so that the governance can be institutionalized and standardized.In order to specifically implement governance according to law,local governments have introduced a large number of technical mechanisms and governance technologies into bureaucratic organizations,resulting in a clear technological governance logic in the government process.This institutional logic has had an important impact on the local government’s organizational structure and mode of action.It has also profoundly changed the operational mechanisms and behavioral logic of administrative control,administrative mobilization,and administrative law enforcement.In addition,from the perspective of technical governance,we can also glimpse the overall trend and deep logic of China’s governance reform on a broader level.Apart from the introduction and conclusion,the main part of this article is divided into six chapters.The introduction elaborates the problem awareness of this article,roughly defines the main connotations of local government,governance according to law and technology governance,and reviews related existing research.The first chapter “Information Simplification: The Origin and Historical Evolution of Technology Governance” discusses the historical motivation of the rise of technology governance.From the perspective of genetics,technological governance is not an accidental phenomenon that emerges out of nowhere or appears suddenly.It is the result of the interaction of a series of values,organizational structures and institutional arrangements.These structural conditions are gradually generated and evolved in the course of long-term historical changes.The conditions that were first formed will have a direct impact on the subsequent system development and constitute profound historical constraints.For moderncountries,the generation and growth of technological governance is usually realized in the process of state-building,which means building an authority system with the state as the core,allowing state power to penetrate to the lowest level of society,and establishing direct control of grassroots people.In this process,the state uses various governance techniques to limit the manifestation and potential of social facts,so that the society can enter its vision in a clearly defined and transparent form.Specific to China’s modernization process,since founding of the People’s Republic of China,the basic trend of state-building is that the government’s ability to penetrate and integrate society gradually improved,the depth of governance continues to deepen.Especially since the reform and opening up,local governments have undergone a series of profound governance transformations.Their subjective initiative has been significantly enhanced,governance methods have diversified,and the characteristics of technological governance have become increasingly prominent.The technical mechanism and logic of governance according to law surfaced.The second chapter “The Bureaucracy in Party-government System: The Organizational Basis of Technological Governance” analyzes the organizational conditions for the rise of technological governance.From the perspective of histology,organizations and individuals in organizations are "rational man" with different needs and capable of rational calculation.To understand technology governance,we must return to the bureaucracy where the local government is located,and fully grasp its organizational structure and operating laws.The evolution of Chinese bureaucracy is generally from "monarchy bureaucracy" to "political bureaucracy",the former constitutes the historical origin of the latter.This feature interacts with other conditions to jointly shape the unique form of bureaucracy of the contemporary Chinese governance structure.The party-government system is a political structure that takes the Communist Party of China as the core and central axis.Party organizations are fully embedded in the government system while retaining their relative independence.The process of embedding the ruling party into the government system is also the process of reorganizing and reforming it,resulting in the Chinese bureaucracy having different organizational characteristics and spiritual qualities than the Max Weber’s bureaucracy and providing a corresponding foundation for technological governance.Specifically,the bureaucracy integrates departmental division and political concentration,building an technical structure that combines vertical and horizontal relationships;it balances formal rationality with instrumental rationality,cultivating technical rationality with technology as form andgovernance as substance;It also combines conventional operation and mobilization operation,creating various problem-oriented and flexible technology strategies.The third chapter “Indicator Evaluation: Administrative Control from the Perspective of Technical Governance” discusses the operational mechanism and logic of local governments in the field of administrative control from the perspective of technical governance.Indicator evaluation is an administrative control method that converts general governance issues into computable quantitative indicator,then using them to set goals and evaluate outcome for governments at all levels.In the context of governance by law,indicators are generally adopted by governments thanks to they have the legitimate appearance of digitization,standardization and objectivity,thus running through all stages of governmental process.From the perspective of the rise of indicator evaluation,an important aspect of modern governance and rational bureaucracy is the digitization of administrative control.The bureaucracy’s ability to maintain its own operation and control society generally depends on the possession,analysis and application of various indicators.Since the Chinese government has carried out performance management,indicator evaluation has been embedded in the process of local government as a form of administrative control,integrating with pressure-based systems,administrative contracting systems and other government governance mechanisms.In practice,the actual results of indicator evaluation are jointly constrained by five basic factors such as indicator system,governance resources,organizational interaction,external environment,executor’s preferences,and each factor affects and interacts with each other.Specific to the stages of indicator operation,from formulation of indicator system to execution of indicator content to acceptance of indicator results,the indicator evaluation in turn presents "interest balance logic","strategic execution logic" and "collaborative logic",showing the complex multiple interactions of local governments.The fourth chapter “Mobilized Governance: Administrative mobilization from the Perspective of Technical Governance” analyzes the practical mechanism and logic of local governments in the field of administrative mobilization from the perspective of technical governance.Mobilized governance is a method that concentrates resources to complete key tasks.In most cases,it does not contradict the order of the rule of law.Furthermore,it can also be combined with specific technical mechanisms under the guidance of the rule of law to achieve the transition to regular operation.Mobilized governance emerges from the tension structure between local government organizational characteristics,performance pressure andresource conditions.It is an effective way for local governments to use organizational forces to make up the gap between heavy governance tasks and limited governance resources,comprehensive social issues and specialized departments.In specific process,local governments usually use the following four technical mechanisms to complete administrative mobilization: first,establishing a high-standard leadership group that includes multiply party and governmental departments;second,emphasizing politics ethics in personnel management,and sending special groups to the grassroots;third,conducting intensive mobilization and extensive publicity to create public opinion momentum;fourth,strengthening supervision so that building a strict responsibility system and detailed governance network.However,mobilized governance also faces constraints such as authoritative competition between leadership teams,professional lag of grassroots cadre,immobilized of propaganda procedures,and incentive imbalance of supervision.These factors gradually form a coexisting,coordinated and dynamic adjustment relationship between mobilized governance and conventional governance.The fifth chapter “Making Files: Administrative Law Enforcement from the Perspective of Technical Governance” explains the practical mechanism and logic of local governments in the field of administrative law enforcement from the perspective of technical governance.Making law enforcement files is a dynamic process that converts case facts in administrative law enforcement into document facts.With continuous improvement of the law enforcement system,relevant subjects have basically formed a set of strict standards and detailed operational procedures in files management.The fact means that production of law enforcement files has become a governance technology,which takes law enforcement agencies as the subject,law enforcement process as the object,standardizing law enforcement activities as the purpose,technology as the guarantee.To understanding the files production,we need to sink into the law enforcement practice,analyzing the files-making technology from the perspective of sequence arrangement,fact record and division of labor.It can be found that,on the one hand,files production shows the logic of technical governance that simplifies the facts of the case;on the other hand,it reflects the three salient features of China’s current governance reform: strengthening top-down control on the basis of existing bureaucracy;choosing the breakthrough points flexibly to reduce potential risks;planning the reform path based on technical rationality that emphasizes unity of objectives andstandardization of means.In addition,the files-making has also led to restructuring of law enforcement goals,unbalanced empowerment,and anti-control space.The sixth chapter “Reengineering Governance: The Limits of Technical Governance and Its Transcendence" discusses the limitations of technical mechanisms and the way to transcend these limitations.Technology governance is faced with constraints from three directions: the external objective world,organizational power relations,and the characteristics of technology itself.These limitations specific including information distortion resulted from fact simplification,power implantation caused by subject game,and target replacement caused by reverse adaptation.They further formed negative effects such as misreading of social facts,emergence of unexpected results,and derivation of secondary problems.To surpass above limitations,firstly,we must adhere to correct value guidance,injecting political ethics such as publicity,coordination,and responsiveness into technical tools so that governance become a human-centered activity.Secondly,we need to set reasonable boundaries,limit technical governance to areas suitable for technical application,strengthen the coordination between technical mechanisms and other mechanisms,and achieve precise matching between governance affairs and governance mechanisms,application scenarios and mechanism forms.Thirdly,we ought to highlight the restrictive effect of the rule of law,comply with the overall trend of government governance transformation,attach importance to systems,laws,and regulations,strengthen the effective supervision of technological processes,so that realizing the integration of technological governance and legal governance.Finally,the conclusion summarizes the main points of the technology governance perspective.At the meso-and micro-level mechanism analysis level,the local government governance should be regarded as a dynamic organizational process,focusing on complex interactions between relative subjects,and by linking the decentralized technical mechanisms,discovering deep logic of governance transformation.Regardless of the specific form of technological governance,it is ultimately necessary to return to the real world and restore subtle perception to vast space and vivid details of social life.Only by evoking the identity of each citizen in the heart,can it be possible to truly realize the legitimacy and effectiveness of government governance.