Research On Blame Avoidance Behavioral Of Local Officials

The dynamic balance of incentives and constraints is an important measure for local officials to achieve their expected goals.The "Promotion Tournament" mechanism during the period centered on economic development strengthened the behavioral incentives of local officials,but the weakening of the constraint mechanism resulted in unexpected behaviors such as corruption,short-sightedness,waste of resources,and moral decline.Since the 18 th National Congress of the Communist Party of China,as an important way to control micro-corruption and light-corruption behavior,the scope and intensity of blame have gradually increased,the constraint mechanism of officials’ behavior has gradually improved,and the normalization of local officials’ behavior has gradually increased.The political ecology of not daring to corrupt,not wanting to corrupt,and unwilling to corrupt has gradually formed,but local officials’ fear of making mistakes,fear of accidents,and fear of being blame has grown,and the blame avoidance behavior arises from this,which has a negative impact on the bureaucratic transmission process and its performance of public governance tasks.In reality,local officials tend to "high attention" in discourse and "minimum execution" in behavior,comply with the minimum responsibility standards required by their superiors,and try to adopt an obscure,vague,and cautious behavioral strategy to avoid direct and confessed confrontation with superior authorities cleverly.The objective formation and propagation of the blame avoidance behavior is not only difficult to manage,but also hinders the comprehensive deepening of the reform process in the new era,so it has become an important issue that needs to be resolved in the governance of local government officials’ behavior.This paper draws on and absorbs the concepts and viewpoints of behavioral economy,organizational behavior,institutionalism,etc.,constructs an explanation framework for the blame avoidance behavior of local officials,and comprehensively uses questionnaire survey method,statistical analysis method,case study method and other methods to study the blame avoidance behavior of local officials from multiple perspectives.On this basis,we have constructed an institutional system that reduces the blame avoidance behavior of local officials,strengthens the incentives for local officials’ performance of responsibility,and put forward countermeasures and suggestions to guide and regulate blame avoidance behavior.The research found that: First,the blame avoidance behavior of local officials is a negative and conservative political behavior,a product of promotion tournament incentives and accountability politics,and a rational choice behavior under the combined effect of internal motivation and external environment.Second,local officials’ blame avoidance behavior strategies can be divided into preventive avoidance models and remedial avoidance models.The preventive model of blame avoidance occurs before the occurrence of official’assessment and blame,including of blame avoidance strategies of formulating task,blame avoidance strategies of decomposing tasks,and blame avoidance strategies of executing tasks.It mainly includes specific forms such as policy strategies,agency strategies,and pointless formalism strategies;the remedial model of blame avoidance occurs after officials’ assessment or blame;it can appear in the processes of upward communication with superiers,downward communication with public and communication in two directions.The specific methods include policy strategies,diversion strategies,informal communication strategies,presentation strategies,agency strategies,concealment strategies and compensation strategies,etc.Third,the blame avoidance behavior of local officials is not only part of the political process and organizational institution,but also profoundly affects the innovation and development of the entire political ecosystem.It has an impact on the public actor,policy process,and political institution.Reasonable blame avoidance behavior will have a positive effect.The negative and unreasonable blame avoidance behavior will lead to negative effects.Fourth,the blame avoidance behavior of local officials is a "double-edged sword" in the governance of local public affairs.Whether its overall effect is positive or negative ultimately depends on the scientific development of the local officials’ assessment and accountability incentive mechanism.The system should be constructed from the perspectives of institutional incentives and institutional constraints to avoid local officials’ passive blame avoidance and reduce the negative effects of blame avoidance,and to guide local officials from avoiding responsibility to claiming credit,specifically including policy measures such as reducing the external risks of local official governance,improving the internal institution of the organization,clarifying the scope of power and responsibility of local officials to achieve a balance between accountability and incentives,and strengthening the local officials’ achievement orientation.