The Country Administration Northern Song Dynasty Under The View Of Intergovernmental Relation

In the history of Chinese feudal society, Northern Song Dynasty (NSD) belongs to a period when centralization was developed and matured. The design of the local administration system during that period was distinctive. When they divided countries into different classes, they not only inherited and developed methods from the previous generation based on the population but also created a new method integrating more factors which were used in daily administrative activities, such as politic military and economy etc. The new system was an informal system, which can quickly response to the realistic situation changes and take adjustment. This shows that the administrative activities were rather flexible and practical. County's administration system was streamlined, without any positions that were equivalent to or lower than the "Si Deng Guan Zhi" defined by the previous generation. The concept of "small country" was realized.From the viewpoint of intergovernmental relation, it seemed that the counties in NSD as part of the regime undertook duties such as information gathering,submission and execution. But their real intentions weren't lying in the illusive vision described by the rhetoric, but ingratiating themselves with superiors and ambition of the future career. At the same time, county administration was at the most grassroots level. As a result, it could get extra power which we call it as non-institutional decentralization from the asymmetry of the information. On the other hand, the central and local higher-level administration had many methods to control the county administration, even took away the resources from the county like robbers. For their own interests, and also for implementing the orders from the superiors, the county administration had to struggle with their superiors for the resources even though they were lacking of corresponding legal methods. In general, the greatest advantage of the counties as the grassroots that can be used for struggling with superiors and the non-institutionalized decentralization came from the distortion, monopolization, and concealment of the information.From the viewpoint of the interpersonal interactions between the county administration and other functional bodies of the government, it played very different roles. The county administration usually shown complaisant respect to the superiors, but it was possible that the magistrates would disobey authority of their superiors due to unreasonable demands. Even though harmonious relationships had been officially advocated between the colleagues, they still struggled with others when they couldn't get along well with each other. They couldn't promote and demote among themselves, however, always the ones who had informal authority would surpass in such factions. The counties lacked effective communication between each other. As a result, they tended to shift their own geographical and administrative troubles onto their neighbors. As for local elites and unofficial authorities, on the one hand, county administration needed their forces to govern the local society, but on the other hand the administration by all means wanted to contain the forces so that the unofficial couldn't take over the real power and be stronger than the government.In the final analysis, in the Chinese feudal society, the intergovernmental relation of the local administration system was seriously subject to the hierarchical rules. The counties might fight with their superiors for their own interests, but in general the pressure of the centralization strengthened along the descending of the hierarchical levels, resulting in the darkness of the local societies and the suffering of the civilians.