Passing Soft Indicators:A Model Of Government Behavior In Collective Property Rights Reform Under The Pressure Of Performance Evaluation

As a large agricultural country,the issue of rural farmers has always been a matter of national importance and livelihood,and the reform of rural collective property rights system is an important part of the "rural revitalization strategy"proposed in the report of the 19th National Congress.Local governments play an important role in the implementation process to make the good policies to be implemented for the benefit of the people,and the results of local governments are judged by government performance management.To explore how the "passing"mindset of local governments in performance management affects their actions in practice is not only of positive significance to the rural revitalization strategy,but also provides lessons and useful insights to local grassroots governance practices.This paper takes the behavioral practice of Z county in Liaoning province in the reform of rural collective property rights system as a case study,and dialogues with Zhou Xueguang’s theory of middle-level government’s muddling through behavior model,using field visits,questionnaire research and literature research to summarize the different strategies adopted by Z county government in order to pass the performance evaluation in the face of different evaluation subjects such as higher-level government,local people and the third-party evaluation team dispatched by the central government.The study summarizes the different strategies adopted by the government of County Z in order to pass the performance evaluation in the face of different evaluation subjects,such as the higher government,the local people,and the third-party evaluation team sent by the central government,in order to improve the original theoretical framework and try to answer the questions of the relationship between government performance management and reform effectiveness,and how to play the monitoring role of government performance management to ensure the effectiveness of reform.The study found that in the local reform practice of County Z,accomplishing reform goals was not the basis of its pursuit from the beginning,and the "hard indicators" of reform performance assessment could not be accomplished,so the County Z government turned to the "soft indicators" to find ways."Soft indicators"refer to non-data and objective measures,but rather subjective indicators such as work time,work procedures,work traces,etc.,which are related to work results but have no direct cause-and-effect relationship and only indicate work attitude.In the face of higher-level government,County Z seeks political alliance between the upper and lower levels by focusing on procedures,reforming policy proposals and approving them at every level and step by step in the implementation stage to reach agreement between the upper and lower levels of government;in the face of the grassroots,County Z provides political incentives in disguise to the people by focusing on democratic forms,weakening management functions and emphasizing service functions,promoting villagers’ ownership status,and making decisions at every stage through village representative assemblies Coupled with the regional undertones of strong government and weak villages,strong obedience and weak reform consciousness,the Z County government eventually gained support from both sides.In the face of the evaluation team dispatched by the central government,the Z County government used these two layers of support as a cover to achieve the goal of getting a good score in the final performance evaluation and passing the assessment.