Many society, once a large -scale epidemic like Shats or Coronatte virus in 2003 or today, will have severe social governance problems.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 additional measures, and these measures will often be blamed from different perspectives.
However, if government departments do not take special measures, horrible people will spontaneously take these measures and even take more extreme measures.Whether these unusual or extreme measures are effective is no longer the key to the problem, because in many people's eyes, there is no better than no 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 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; from a legal point of view, the local government is only a dispatched agency of the central government, not an institution 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 law, because if you do the theory and law completely, there will be many problems and lead to a crisis of governance.
The relationship between the central government and the local government is theoretically manifested in the relationship between the commissioner 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 the behavior will be the meeting.The occurrence of inconsistent with the central government (commissioner).The central government has therefore designed some system rules so that the two are consistent.But this has its own positive side and a negative place.
The positive place is to maintain the consistency of legal and policies. The negative place is to ignore local differences, making it difficult for law and policies to implement.Furthermore, a single state assumes that local governments are just executors, not decision makers.But in fact, local governments are also first -level governments, not just the agency of the central government.There are many places that need direct decisions of local officials, rather than 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, its decision -making will also take into account the interests of the whole society.This involves the relationship between local and overall.Will a piece of information be announced at the central level, will it cause panic in the whole society?Do you want to make this information a national news or control it in a local area?These must be considered.Because this multi -factor consideration and decision -making takes time, 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, from the perspective of ordinary people, it has caused the actual effect of concealment and caused panic in society.Event such an epidemic is different from other incidents, because it involves the entire society, no matter which level of governments, it is difficult to solve the problem through internal operations.
The second is the issue of local governments and society.In terms of epidemic issues, the first problem faced by local governments is whether there is 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, and has limited power in terms of decision -making.Both 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 to a certain extent ignore the overall interests, it will face pressure from superiors.It can be seen that the phenomenon of postponing information, less reports, concealment, and other phenomena are produced in such a behavior logic process, and it is inevitable.
Institutional arrangement to solve problems
This is not only a problem in China, but also a problem faced by many countries. Many institutional arrangements must be developed to solve it.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 the kind of constitutional or legal federal in the West, but the federal of specific operations or policy design and execution behavior. It meets a single system of centralization, but it needs to be decentralized in many aspects.
Under the behavior federal system, in some areas, the central government is coordinated by the central government. The central power is inserted to the end, penetrating into various places, facilitating the central government to collect information and processing information directly, and make scientific decisions on this basis.However, in other areas, the central government simply fully authorizes places and allows local governments to make decisions and implementation.
However, although the non -institutional characteristics of the Federal Federation have brought elasticity to the central and local relations under the single system, it has also hindered the institutional development of central local relations.From an international perspective, since the Second World War, the federal system that had been very decentralized in the past has shown increasingly intensive power, indicating that the central (federal) government has more and more functions and responsibilities in contemporary society.Not only is it limited to traditional diplomatic and military fields, but it 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. If they are not authorized, they are not fully concentrated to the central government.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.The entire central government means that the central government must set up its own institutions in various places. Everything is coordinated by the central government, and the central power is directly deepened.
That is to say, 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 of the current institutional arrangements under a single system. On the one hand, selectively collectively centralized power, and focus on some of the power of power with national significance to reorganize central power.Sexual division, decentralize some of the power with only local significance to the local area, and let the local responsibility be responsible for all responsibilities.
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 issues to deal with here. The first is the independence of professionals. The system must ensure that they only decide or judge from professionalism, not for any other goals.There is substantial power during execution.
In a democratic society, non -authorized power is often questioned because this power comes from knowledge and experience, not votes.But in fact, in the process of governing contemporary complicated society, this power not only exists objectively, but also becomes more and more important. Sometimes it is even more social influence that is even greater than political power.Doctors such as Shas and coronary virusesIn the field of academics, the trust of 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. This is the case in many other areas. The independence of the central bank is another typical example.
To a large extent, leaving 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 knowledge, we must deal with the relationship between the political power of the formal system (or the power of formal authorization) and the non -authorized knowledge power.
Professional power will be very difficult to exercise, and it will also encounter huge political risks.But at the same time, we must also see that the nature of knowledge power is diverse, because knowledge itself is open.It is impossible for experts to have only one opinion. Everyone expresses opinions from different perspectives.As long as the experts make opinions from professional and professional ethics, instead of expressing their opinions from any other considerations, this diversity will not only cause contradictions (different views on the same thing), but will form a knowledge room.The balance of balance between each other, thereby reducing or even avoiding 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.
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 treats the former as a helper.Social forces are more prominent in providing service functions.
Generally speaking, the government's counterpart unit is still the government or local organization, but the non -governmental organization is the individual of society, even the society.P2P (individual) 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.
Supervise non -governmental organizations to deal with crisis characters
However, the role of non -governmental organizations in the process of dealing with crisis should also be supervised.People cannot simply believe that all non -governmental organizations are good, and there will be evil even in front of disasters.Avoiding social forces can be controlled. First, through the supervision and regulation of government systems, especially the law, and the other is, through social forces, they are originally diversified to achieve mutual supervision and checks and balances between them.
The mutual balance and supervision between social forces are even more important than the government's supervision. The reason is simple. The social forces can go deep into the people than the government and understand the people's conditions.In the process of crown disease diffusion, there are many problems with the role of social forces and non -governmental organizations in this regard.The 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 the Shats epidemic occurred, people focused on the construction of a formal system of public health, and did not consider the non -governmental organization system.
In fact, after the Shats epidemic, the non -governmental organization of China grew rapidly, especially in economically developed regions.However, the development of non -governmental organizations stopped, because people made excessive political interpretation of non -governmental organizations.If social forces cannot be included in 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 activity, 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 miss the officials who are active on the institutional platform during the period of Shas, but not because the platform at that time was better than today, but because the officials at that time were more actions than now.
This needs to form a task team that can have both professional knowledge and actions during the epidemic situation, 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 need to seek a system that can be combined with centralized and decentralization.It requires a high level of centralization, because the epidemic involves the entire society; but it also requires a high degree of autonomy, because the object of governance is a specific local society.
Factors such as the widespread of the Internet and social media, the large -scale flow of population, and the large -scale urbanization are also calling for the emergence of a composite governance system with both centralized and decentralization.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
