The Dilemma Of Hierarchical Governance

According to the viewpoint of the Western political economy school,hierarchical governance,as a product of market mechanism failure,has efficiency advantages in dealing with issues such as information asymmetry,market monopoly,and externalities.However,a large number of existing theoretical and empirical studies have shown that the aforementioned problems that lead to market failures will also lead to the failure of hierarchical governance,which will make the organization into a governance dilemma.In fact,after the long-term development and evolution since the founding of the People’s Republic of China,hierarchical governance has gradually tended to be a modern rational hierarchical governance,but it still shows different characteristics from the latter in many aspects.For example,administrative affairs are contracted out layer by layer,administrative tasks are added layer by layer,sports governance,and collusion.Therefore,this thesis focuses on hierarchical governance in the Chinese context and the difficulties it faces in the operation.Also,its specific connotations are presented to deepen the understanding of its operation in China by combining the theory of administrative subcontract with the empirical research on the household waste classification in public institutions in Y City.The main points of the thesis include: the mismatch of high vertical subcontract and low promotion incentive system has aggravated information asymmetry,thus making it easier for the organization to fall into the governance dilemma;when the attention of superiors shifts to specific public affairs under the dilemma of hierarchical governance,the governance performance of the affairs will be significantly improved;however,this improvement in governance performance has the characteristics of a "pendulum",which will decline with the weakening of superiors’ attention,and then cause the organization to once again fall into the governance dilemma.This paper shows that,the failure of the hierarchical governance objectively exists because of the problems of information asymmetry,monopoly and externality.Specifically in the Context of China,the institution design of administrative subcontract exacerbates the information asymmetry to a certain extent,and further highlights the dilemma of hierarchical governance under the mismatch between high vertical subcontract and low promotion incentives.But the dilemma is not fixed and will change as the government’s attention shifts.To be specific,when the superior government pays more attention to a certain public affair in a governance dilemma,the corresponding incentive system can be improved,and the hierarchical governance dilemma can be effectively alleviated in a short term.But as the attention of the higher government decreases,the incentive power also decreases.In this way,the governance of this public affair will return to the original predicament,thus presenting the "pendulum" phenomenon of governance performance.From the perspective of practice,China’s household waste classification governance cases are representative in the aforementioned issues.With 2017 as the node,the governance process can be divided into two stages: pilot exploration and mandatory classification.Meanwhile,the performance of waste classification governance also changes accordingly,presenting a law consistent with the research hypothesis,which provides a strong empirical support for exploring the formation mechanism and evolution of the hierarchical governance dilemma.