Many society, once a large -scale epidemic like Shats or the 2019 coronary virus in 2003 or today's 2019 coronary virus, will occur serious social governance issues.Although people are looking forward to reason, rationality often becomes very rare or even impossible when the epidemic occurs, because the epidemic causes a large -scale psychological panic.At this time, government departments will inevitably take some special or extra measures, which are often accused from different perspectives.
However, if the government departments do not take special measures, the horrified people will spontaneously take these measures and even take more extreme measures.Whether these unusual or extreme measures are the key to the problem, because in many people's eyes, there is no better than that, at least to meet a psychological needs.
If the epidemic occurs, this extreme behavior is inevitable, then in daily and general institutional design, it is necessary to consider the emergence of similar situations in order to reduce or even avoid the use of extreme measures.Human institutional practice has made a scientific system design possible.As far as China is concerned, this involves many system design issues.
The first is the relationship between the central and local relationships.Under the single system in China, theoretically, the power of the local government comes from the authorization of the superior government; or, from a legal point of view, the local government is just a dispatched agency of the central government, not an agency independent of the central government.However, at the level of power operation, whether it is the central or local, it is difficult to act according to theory and laws, because if they do the theory and law completely, there will be many problems, resulting in a crisis of governance.
The relationship between the central and local and local governments is theoretically manifested as the relationship between the attorney and the agent, but the relationship between the two is not a simple authorization relationship, because the agent (local government) has its own considerations on things, and its behavior will appear with the central government (commissioned commissionedPeople) Inconsistent situations.Therefore, the central government should design some system rules so that the two are consistent.There is a positive side and a negative place.The positive thing is that it maintains the consistency of law and policies. The negative part is to ignore the local differences, making it difficult for law and policies to implement it.
Furthermore, a single state assumes that local governments are just executors, not decision makers.In fact, local governments are also first -level governments, not just the agency of the central government.There are many aspects of direct decisions of local officials, not simply waiting and obeying the central government's decision -making.If it is too centralized, the central government will face information collection, information transmission time, and the judgment of information on central officials.
More importantly, even if the central government obtains complete local information, the interests of the whole society must be considered when decision -making.This involves local and overall relationships.Will a message at the central level of publication cause panic in the whole society?Would you like to publish this information into a national news or control it in a local area?These must be considered.This multi -factor consideration and decision -making takes time, so it often delays the release and dissemination of information at the actual level.
The spread of coronary virus shows this.The mayor of Wuhan's defense said that he did not conceal the information, but was published in accordance with the laws and government regulations.But even without intentional concealment, to ordinary people's eyes, the actual effect of concealment has caused society to panic.The epidemic is different from other events, because it involves the entire society, no matter which level of governments, it is difficult for the problems to solve the problem through internal operations.
It is necessary to solve the epidemic by institutional arrangements
The second is the issue of local governments and society.In the epidemic issue, the first problem faced by the local government is whether there is an independent decision -making power.The local area is subject to various systems and legal factors, and it is sandwiched between the central and local society. In terms of decision -making, the power is limited, and the decision -making and non -decision -making must bear risk.Local authorization comes from superiors, but also faces direct pressure from local society.If you only go on, you will face the pressure of society, and the pressure from society is so large that it will also attract the accountability of the central government; on the other hand, if it is directly responsible for the society, it will indicate that the local government must first have the first thing to do.Considering the interests of the local, and ignoring the overall interests to a certain extent, this will face the pressure from superiors.It can be seen that the phenomenon of delaying the release of information, less reports, and concealment all occurred in the process of behavior logic, which is inevitable.
According to experience, this is not only a problem in China, but also a problem faced by many countries. It must be solved through many institutional arrangements.The problems existing under a single system can be borrowed from some federal system methods.In fact, China has implemented a federal method for a long time.The Federal Federation is not a constitutional or legal federal in the West, but a federal in specific operations or policy design and execution behavior. It meets the needs of a single system of centralization but in many ways.
Under the behavior federal system, some fields are coordinated by the central government. The central power is inserted to the end, penetrated into various places, facilitated the central government to collect and process information directly, and make scientific decisions on this basis.In other areas, the central government simply fully authorizes places and allows local governments to make decisions and implementation.Although the non -institutional characteristics of the Federal Federation have brought elasticity to the central local relations under the single system, it also hinders the institutional development of central local relations.
From an international perspective, since the Second World War, the federal system that had previously been very decentralized has shown increasing power, indicating that the central (federal) government has more and more functions and responsibilities in contemporary society.The power of the central government is not only limited to traditional diplomatic and military fields, but also involves almost all important aspects of political, economic and social, including finance, finance, social security, and public health.
Therefore, there are two choices in China.The authorized place shows that it is necessary to give local highly independent decision -making power and execution rights in law and system.In the case of lack of local ability, you can help the central government.A complete concentration of central government means that the central government wants to set up its own institutions in various places. Everything is coordinated by the central government.
In other words, these central institutions have no relationship with local governments, and they are directly collected and handled by central institutions.The central government can also use local or other places to execute.To do this, we must change some institutional arrangements under the current single system. On the one hand, selectively centralized power, focusing on some of the power of power with national significance, and reorganizing the central power of the central power; on the other hand, selectiveDivision of power, decentralize all the power with only local significance to the place, and let the local responsibility be responsible for all responsibilities.
Guarantee non -authorized power
The third is the role of professionals.In the field of epidemic, here mainly refer to the power of doctors and other professionals.Professional or general knowledge of knowledge belongs to non -authorized power, because although professionals are not part of the government, they have huge social influence.There are several problems here to deal with.The first is the independence of professionals. The system must ensure that they only decide or judge from professionalism, not for any other purpose.Second, the system must also ensure that they can have substantial power in the process of decision -making and execution.
In a democratic society, non -authorized power is often questioned because this power comes from knowledge and experience, not votes.In fact, in the process of governing contemporary complicated society, this kind of power not only exists objectively, but also becomes more and more important. Sometimes it even exerts a greater social influence than political power.
In the fields of medical fields such as Shas and coronary viruses, society's trust in experts will be much higher than the trust of politicians.Of course, the power of knowledge is not limited to the medical field, and this is the case in many other areas. The independence of the central bank is another typical example.To a large extent, leaveWith the power of knowledge, the governance of modern society is difficult to do.
In other words, in modern society, power without knowledge cannot be called power.This is the main reason why the exercise of political power in the contemporary world is increasingly difficult to exercise in the traditional sense.To give full play to the role of professionals and exercise good professional power power, we must deal with the relationship between the political power (or formal authorized power) of the formal system and the non -authorized knowledge power.If professional power does not have enough institutional space, it will be very difficult to exercise, and it will also encounter huge political risks.
At the same time, the nature of knowledge and power is diverse, because the knowledge itself is open, and experts cannot have only one opinion. Everyone expresses opinions from different angles.Experts express opinions from professional and professional ethics, rather than any other considerations to express opinions. This diversity will not only cause contradictions (different views on the same thing), but will form a balance between knowledge between knowledge, thereby thus, therebyReduce or even avoid knowledge errors.
The fourth is the role of society (including social organizations, religious organizations and entrepreneurs).Because of the complexity of modern society, the role of social organizations or social forces in the process of social governance is increasing.From the global perspective, non -governmental organizations have developed rapidly since World War II.This is not because people call the needs of political participation, but the inherent needs of modern society.Many non -governmental organizations do not have any political nature, and they do not have the needs and intentions of political participation. Instead, they focus on providing social services.
Social forces to cope with the epidemic
As far as the social governance of the epidemic is concerned, the role of social forces is self -explanatory.The epidemic is highly social. Social organizations are part of society, and have great ability to collect real information.It should be said that the existence and operation of the social system is not contradictory with the formal system, if the latter regards the former as a helper.Social forces are more prominent in providing service functions.Generally speaking, government counterparts are still government or local organizations, but non -governmental organizations are the individuals of society, even society.The method of point -to -point (P2P) is difficult to achieve in government systems, and it is not difficult for non -governmental organizations.In the era of Internet and social media, the role of social organizations in providing this personalized service is increasing.
However, the role of non -governmental organizations in the process of dealing with crisis should also be supervised.People cannot simply think that all non -governmental organizations are good, because even in the face of disaster.Avoiding social forces can be achieved by control.The first is through the supervision and regulation of government systems, especially the law, and the other is that through the characteristics of social forces, they are originally diverse to achieve mutual supervision and checks and balance between them.
The mutual balance and supervision between social forces are even more important than the government's supervision. The reason is simple. Social forces can go deep into the people than the government and understand the people's conditions.In the process of the coronary virus diffusion, there are many problems with the role of social forces and non -governmental organizations in this regard, and even the absence, mainly the contradiction with the formal system, such as non -governmental organizations often cannot officially get formal formalThe authorization of the system can be used as.
Like professional groups, can social organizations be able to obtain non -authorized power and play a more important role in it?Objective needs have emerged, but it is not reflected in various institutional arrangements.After the last time, people focused on the construction of a formal system of public health without considering the non -governmental organization system.In fact, after Shas, Chinese non -governmental organizations grew rapidly, especially in economically developed areas.However, the development of non -governmental organizations was abruptly stopped because people made excessive political interpretation of non -governmental organizations.Regardless of whether people like or not, if they cannot include social forces into the large system of social governance, there will be a gap in any social governance.
In addition to these objective institutional arrangements, the appointment of officials in the epidemic is extremely critical.The system is used by people and is the stage of human activities, so the quality and type of officials are very important.In the same system platform, different people's use will have completely different effects.Today, people who miss Shas who are active on the institutional platform today are not because the platform at that time was better than today, but because the officials at that time were more actions than they are now.
This must set up a task team with both professional knowledge and actions during the epidemic period, and can be fully authorized.The importance of such a team is not only the ability to solve problems, but more importantly, it can give social confidence, and believe that difficulties will eventually pass.During the epidemic period, the society's trust in the government is more important than anything.If you can combine the power of expert knowledge and the power of this special task team, whether it is to curb the epidemic or stable society, it will inevitably bring beyond expected results.
Anyway, society during the governance of the epidemic is a comprehensive system and policy project.The governance of modern and complex society cannot be summarized simply with centralized or decentralized power.People must seek a system that can be combined with centralized and decentralized power, which requires high centralization, because the epidemic involves the entire society and requires a high degree of autonomy, because the object of governance is a specific local society.
Factors such as the widespread use of Internet and social media, the large -scale flow of population, and large urbanization are also calling for the emergence of a composite governance system with both centralized and decentralized power.In this system, everyone is a stakeholder, and everyone has a responsibility to maintain good public products and avoid bad public products.
(The author is a professor at the East Asia Research Institute of the National University of Singapore)
(The article only represents personal point of view)
