Book Description

This dissertation, "China's Civil Service Reform and Local Government Performance: a Principal-agent Perspective" by Xiaoqi, Wang, 王曉琦, was obtained from The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) and is being sold pursuant to Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation. All rights not granted by the above license are retained by the author. Abstract: Abstract of thesis entitled "China's Civil Service Reform and Local Government Performance: A Principal-Agent Perspective" Submitted by Wang Xiaoqi for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy at The University of Hong Kong May 2006 This dissertation has examined the impacts of China's Civil Service Reform on the performance of government agencies in charge of environmental protection and education in three cities (Haidian district of Beijing, Changchun, and Ningbo). I have explored China's Civil Service Reform and its impact on local government performance within a principal-agent framework. Because of information asymmetry and conflict of interest, bureaucratic superiors on three hierarchical levels within the old Cadre Management System had trouble in obtaining full compliance from their bureaucratic subordinates. But, being rational, the bureaucratic superiors (especially the central leadership of the Chinese Communist Party) design rules and institutions to mitigate the problems. The introduction of China's Civil Service System in 1993 is one such effort to i manage cadres. The crucial outputs and outcomes of China's Civil Service Reform are the major focus of this study. In particular, this dissertation aims to answer the following related questions. How have the new sets of rules or initiatives shaped the incentives facing the civil servants and thus influenced the way they exercise their discretion (this being the managerial goal of the reforms)? How do the Reforms affect the ability of the Chinese leadership to control the bureaucracy (the political goal of the reforms), and what are the implications of the Reforms for the relationships among the political leadership, the bureaucrats, and the citizens? How might we explain the variations in reform implementations and performance across policy areas and regions after China's adoption of the Civil Service System? I find that components of China's Civil Service Reform provide superiors solutions to alleviate the control problems, which were embedded in three hierarchical levels of Chinese government, through incentive-alignment and information discovery. The alleviations of control problems manifest themselves in the improvement of local government performance, which is measured by objective indicators and citizen survey data in this study. In general, I find the managerial and political objectives of China's Civil Service Reform have been met. As the outputs of the reforms, evidence suggests civil service quality has improved and local governments have adopted and implemented China's Civil Service System to a large extent. Moreover, the implementation of China's ii Civil Service System has motivated the civil servants to put more conscious effort into their work and accordingly adjust the way they treat their clients. Referring to the outcomes of the reforms, the implementation of the components of China's Civil Service System and other administrative monitoring mechanisms has helped the central leadership in China to successfully strengthen control over the local governments and the local bureaucrats. The strengthened control of the bureaucracy has manifested itself in better provision and delivery of public services, which in turn leads to increased citizen satisfaction with regard to government performance. All these illustrate that local government