| The transformation of government functions is an important part of comprehensively deepening government reforms,and it is also an important fulcrum for establishing a sound market system and mature social system.Facing the new requirements and new expectations of people in new era,how to promote the modernization of state governance with the modernization of government functions is a key issue in transforming China’s institutional advantages into governance effectiveness.However,there are misunderstandings in both theory and practice on the relationship between government functions transformation and governance performance.Governance performance is usually acquiesced to the inevitable result of government functions transformation,which leading to the researchers pay much attention on the motivation rather than consequences of government functions transformation.It has led to the formalization of government functions transformation.Therefore,it’s of great theoretical and practical significance to explore the causal mechanism and practical strategies between the government functions transformation and governance performance.Based on the main ideas of structural functionalism,this study combined the adjustment of the government-market-society ternary relationship with the behavioral logic of core actors from the perspective of structural adjustment.A "structure-behavior-performance" analysis framework for the influence mechanism of government functions transformation on governance performance was constructed.Specifically,the influence mechanism of government functions transformation on governance performance mainly included two paths:At the structural level,changes in external governance resources forced the government to build a governance structure that could effectively integrate governance resources through function transformation to achieve good governance performance;At the behavioral level,government functions transformation achieved improvement in governance performance by constructing an action framework which achieved a balance of actor benefits.In empirical research,this research constructed a questionnaire with high reliability and validity to evaluate the quality of government functions transformation and governance performance of 234 cities in China.The results of the survey showed obvious regional differences that the eastern region was significantly better than other regions.The central and western regions had little difference,but the northeast region was relatively worse.The adjustment of internal government structure was the main shortcoming of government function transformation in various regions.Based on the questionnaire survey,the structural equation model(SEM)was used to characterize the influence path of government function transformation on governance performance.It was found that government function transformation could not directly affect governance performance,but rather indirectly through government capability,market subject vitality and social organization vitality.The mediating effect of government capacity was the most obvious.The adjustment of internal government structure had the greatest effect on the improvement of governance performance.A quasi-natural experiment on the establishment of administrative approval centers in 184 cities across the country further showed that the transformation of government functions help to improve governance performance,and its micro-mechanism was mainly to reduce transaction costs for actors.Additionally,the improvement of the endowment of governance resources,such as marketization,socialization,and legalization amplified the effect between government functions transformation and governance performance.Based on the above conclusions,this research proposed three paths to optimize the transformation of government functions:in terms of environment,protection of the rule of law and promoting comprehensive reforms;in terms of organization,Streamlining the relationship between government,markets and society and reengineering the organization;in terms of actor:improving capability and achieving cooperative governance.There were three possible innovations of this research.Firstly,it transcended the common understanding that government function transformation would inevitably improve governance performance,which guided the research perspectives of government function transformation from the motivation to the consequence.Secondly,it jumped out from the research perspective of organizational change,and constructed the "structure-behavior-performance" analysis framework from the perspective of structural adjustment,which combining the adjustment of the governmentmarket-society ternary relationship with the behavioral logic of core actors.Thirdly,it made a breakthrough on the research paradigm of due research,and introduced a variety of empirical methods such as structural equation models and quasi-natural experiments to verify the influence mechanism of government function reformation on governance performance. |
