Research On The Administrative Punishment Power System Of Townships And Streets In China

On January 22,2021,the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress amended and passed the Administrative Punishment Law,adding a separate article 24 to allow township and neighborhoods to obtain the status of the subject of administrative punishment power.This new regulation has profoundly affected China’s existing administrative law enforcement system,promoted the sinking of law enforcement activities to the grassroots level,and committed to solving the problem of "invisible management and invisible management" at the grassroots level.All provinces and localities have also responded according to their actual conditions and issued various laws,regulations and normative documents.However,in order to ensure the vitality of institutional reform,the relevant laws and regulations are relatively vague,which has led to large differences in system design in various places,and there are many problems in the standardization of empowerment.Based on Article 24 of the law,this paper basically defines the basic principles,channels,conditions and scope of the decentralization of administrative punishment power to townships and streets,clarifies that the empowerment behavior should be reasonable and legal,clarifies the division of labor among provincial people’s congresses,governments and departments,and determines the scope and type of empowerment.In addition,the author studies the current system of administrative punishment power in townships and streets from macro and micro perspectives.From the macro level,the provincial-level normative documents on the administrative punishment power system of townships and streets in 31 provinces,autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the Central Government were sorted out,and it was found that there were insufficient empowerment normative documents in various places,insufficient participation of prefecture and municipal governments,urban management and comprehensive law enforcement,and unclear handling of the relationship between grassroots law enforcement agencies and "station offices".In addition,the town of X in Zhejiang Province,which has already exercised administrative punishment power in its own name,was selected for in-depth investigation,and found that it had encountered obstacles in the three aspects of "personnel and finance" and insufficient supervision mechanisms.It is not difficult to find the reasons for this: legislation cannot keep up with the reform,law enforcers do not have enough understanding of the superior law,the establishment of the system is not complete,and the detailed rules and standards are not clear enough are the main causes of the reform dilemma.To solve the above problems,we should start from the links of amending the law,enacting regulations,and refining standards,and on the basis of a deep understanding of the new law,standardize the empowerment behavior and establish an administrative law enforcement system suitable for grassroots governments based on the criteria of streamlining efficiency and consistency of rights and responsibilities;Amend the law to follow up the reform,and promptly strengthen the legality of the overall decentralization of administrative law enforcement powers;Refine the guidelines to reduce the "personnel and financial" difficulties encountered in the transfer of authority to the grassroots level;Establish a filing system to provide safeguards for the standardization of empowerment and law enforcement behavior.This paper only explores the institutional arrangements of town X,which is inevitably a partial generalization,but it is hoped that the analysis of the administrative punishment power system in town X will provide experience for more local governments that need to delegate administrative punishment power.