A Study On The Economic Responsibility Audit Of The Leading Cadres In County-level Party And Governments

The economic responsibility audit has played an irreplaceable role in strengthening the supervision and management of cadres, punishing and preventing corruption. The county-level government is a connecting link between the preceding and the following at a critical nexus in five-level power management and is the grassroots system of power operation in China. From the economy in terms of volume the nearly Chinese 3,000 county-level governments are playing a vital role in the operation of the whole national economy. To conduct the economic responsibility audit of the leading cadres in county-level governments, to grasp the basic performance of its financial responsibility and job performance during tenure, to report the existing problems and to define the corresponding responsibilities are necessary for promoting the construction of the Party conduct and of an honest and clean government and for the social and scientific development of regional areas. Restricted by such objective factors as policies, wide involvements, high impact, hard evidence and so on, the economic responsibility audit has some defects in mechanism of implementation, evaluation of audit and the use of results.In this paper through the summarization and review on the study of the current situation of economic responsibility audit at home and abroad, the analysis and induction of the party-government leaders’ connotation of economic responsibility audit including its concept, audit content, features and the county-level leaders’important role in economic responsibility audit are conducted by using such theories of agency by agreement, economic responsibility to be publicly entrusted, asymmetric information as the analytical tools. Take X-City as an example, this paper demonstrates the existing status of the economic responsibility audit among the leading cadres in county-level party and government and analyzes the existing issues of "audit after leaving office", "the old account ignored by the new government" and ill-defined responsibilities. The causes of formation are analyzed from aspects of the audit-entrustment system of economic responsibility, policies and regulations, evaluation system of audit and indicators for government performance check. Finally, from the institutional perspective this paper puts forward such countermeasures as reconstructing entrustment relationship of economic responsibility audit, building scientific evaluation mechanism of government performance, implementing the system of synchronization between "the announcement of audit results" and "publicity of cadre assessment" and building the bridging mechanism of predecessor-successor. This paper also proposes policies, laws and regulations to improve to define the leading cadres’ economic responsibilities in county-level Party and governments, to perfect the system of taking office and requirements of obligations. From the perspective of government-audit implementer this paper provides the countermeasures of building the evaluation index system of the economic responsibility audit among leading cadres in county-level party and governments.