Is It Possible for Government and Society Co-Governance Come True?—Take the Town of Houjie, Dongguan City, as an Example ()
1. Introduction
With the continuous improvement of the government service consciousness and the growth of civil society, grassroots government implementation way and the method of social management are increasingly diversified, mainly presented more paying attention to realize the government management organization flattening, emphasize the social main body empowerment, paying attention to the social public benefit maximization, cooperating with the government, and society development trend, etc. Grassroots governments are committed to exploring ways to improve the quality of public services in social governance, which is not only to meet the practical needs of the transformation of government functions, but also to meet the needs of the prevailing environment of political and social cooperation.
2. The Background of Government Governance Innovation
Houjie town is one of the important industrial towns in Dongguan. With an area of 126 square kilometers and 24 neighborhood committees under its jurisdiction, it has a registered population of 100,000 and a permanent resident population of 400,000. In 2015, its GDP was 32.1 billion yuan and its total export was 9.2 billion U.S. dollars. The town’s industrial structure is relatively traditional on the whole, among which, its furniture and shoe industry is relatively developed, the population density within the jurisdiction is large, rental houses and small shops, small workshops, small entertainment venues densely covered, industrial parks and village community residential areas mixed and other situations constitute a huge picture of community population flow. Among them, more than 22,000 rental house, more than 30,000 “list” (small shops, small workshops, small entertainment place) in the whole town more than 80,000 column tube unit accounted for as high as 70% above, for traditional basic regulatory system of government, its regulatory pressure is unbearable, the existing government law enforcement and community management resource allocation and management ability is obviously difficult to meet the needs of the orderly management of the town, this one phase, Houjie town is tube leakage rate is extremely high, and the phenomenon of frequent accidents.
In April 2014, wan Zhuopei, then secretary of the party committee of Houjie town, proposed the reform policy of taking community network management as the starting point and innovation of public safety management system as the breakthrough point, so as to deepen the reform of grass-roots supervision system.
Houjie town divides the whole town into 23 community networks and 1 park network, including 101 basic networks, and ensures that each basic network is equipped with more than two full-time grid members. Mainly to undertake “hen, waiters, security officer, the inspector and supervisor, advocate” the six responsibilities, public security, fire protection, safety, and successively to new residents (rental and services of the floating population administration), industry and commerce, food drug safety, health and environmental protection department of the single department business network integration, realize the nets.
At the community level, a 412-person grid member service team has been built by integrating the institutions and personnel of the community’s new Dongguan people service management station, labor service station, work safety office, fire inspection service team and so on. This team for scheduling, management, evaluation and training of unification, and equipped with uniform clothing and equipment for construction, mainly responsible for rental housing, the “three small” place, enterprises, professional market, commercial residential district and other column object information collection, the hidden perils in safety, business change follow-up supervision and service management of the floating population and other comprehensive business.
In terms of working mechanism, from top to bottom of the town has a large-scale based on object oriented methods work across departments of business process reengineering, thorough combing departments and community task and information interaction, and formulated the detailed concrete into the list, established the action process of standardization and set up community’s police chief as the core of the normalized mechanism of joint law enforcement, to deal with a community platform to handle problems and hidden dangers. The establishment and improvement of the machine control have rapidly improved the ability of each community to deal with all kinds of problems and hidden dangers within its jurisdiction. By the beginning of 2016, the community’s independent discharge rate has reached more than 90%, and the supervision pattern of the whole town has been reset.
In terms of information support, since April 2014, Houjie town, through the way of joint venture accumulative total investment ten million yuan, gradually built the “Internet + grassroots service regulation” comprehensive information regulatory support platform, the platform contains the information resource center, community network, basic elements of geographic information encoding (social credit code), information collection, party building and community integrated service management and public safety credit archives management, and other 13 management subsystem, a data center and at the same time, the series mobile phone APP, Such as community grid member search edition, the supervision of the departments patrol version, edition, the landlord, the supervision of the inspection work network editions of “micro tube” horse “tour city” series such as research and development and cooperate with the platform, using the “+” Internet connection all the characteristics of reflected on this platform, make the town formed a picture of the government management efficiency, department information exchange, high community self disposal ability, social participation of multiple subject, energetic, and effective supervision.
In market regulation, Houjie town of Dongguan city in September 2015 in combination with commercial registration system reform, the industry and commerce, food drug safety, health and environmental protection functions of the follow-up supervision of business integration into the case, through the grid member team of reuse, process integration and data sharing, change the business and its subsequent use coordinated supervision business and information chain extended to the village level, realize the comprehensive regulation, the government public service at the grass-roots level and the depth of the market supervision function and its working system integration.
Through the practice of early, today’s Houjie town has built a “responsibilities clear, fine management, information sharing, mobile regulation, service forward” grassroots community grids management system, the whole town was achieved by “a net” departments coordination office, draw a sector and community responsibility boundary, realize the whole town the exchange of information resources sharing, the elaborating management mode become the norm.
3. Innovation Cases of Government Governance
In 2016, Chinese governments at all levels intensified the reform efforts on the service supply side by promoting the reform concepts of streamlining administration and delegating power, combining decentralization with management decentralization, and optimizing service management. Among them, Shenzhen has become a “houjie sample” with promotion significance to deepen the reform of the supply side of government functions and public services with the mode of “Internet + national creation and security”.
Public security is a social need that needs close attention in the field of social governance and a public interest that both the government and the people pay close attention to. Among the ten livelihood projects in Dongguan, improving social security has been ranked first for many years in succession. It can be seen that the task of improving social security needs to be stepped up.
Since 2016, Houjie town, on the basis of the original grid management network, innovation launched the “Internet + universal creates peacefully” social security supervision work pattern, this pattern is mainly through the establishment of residential district, professional market, enterprises, schools, hotels, large and medium-sized shopping malls, such as work network system, the rule network platform of various organized power of autonomy to achieve the organization again, to form Zhengshe work situation.
It is understood that “Internet + the people create security” is Houjie town “Internet + grassroots social governance” this comprehensive information main platform extends out of a sub-platform for the main body of political and social governance, its functional modules have realized the seamless docking of the main platform, to achieve the sharing of political and social information.
“Internet + national innovation and security” mainly adopts the “one, two, three, four and five” working methods, which are respectively to strengthen one core, build two informatization support platforms, implement three list series, establish four categories of grids and establish five teams. Among them, one core is mainly to promote the exploration and promotion of innovation mode of grass-roots social governance with party building as the core. The two supporting platforms respectively include the main platform of “Internet + grassroots social governance” and the sub-platform of “Internet + national innovation and security”. The three list series mainly refer to the party construction responsibility list series, the enterprise mandatory work list series and the grid into the grid item list series; Four types of grid communities, roads, three types of governance entity grid and party building functional grid; And through the establishment of party affairs workers, grid members, auxiliary police, security guards, volunteers these five teams form the main personnel skeleton to support the “national security” work system.
4. An Analytical Framework
Since 1989, when the world bank used the word “governance crisis” to refer to African issues, the word “governance” has been given a new meaning and gained popularity in the academic world. Then, with the continuous development of governance theory, the deepening of modern democracy theory and the promotion of “participatory democracy” and “deliberative democracy” practice, participatory governance theory gradually takes shape and is promoted as a new governance model that emphasizes citizens’ participation in governance.
The theory of participatory governance originates from western political theories and governance models, so western scholars have conducted in-depth research on the theory of participatory governance. The study of participatory governance theory in western political circles is mainly divided into theoretical and practical aspects.
Concerning the research on the theory of participatory governance, Althew Von and Eric Wright emphasized that participatory governance is a process of citizen empowerment, which is called “empowering participatory governance”. K. Papadakis believes that participatory governance is a process in which stakeholders participate in decision-making and mainly emphasizes the cooperation between social subject networks in the decision-making process. Guy Peters, on the other hand, believes that participatory governance is a model of government governance and puts forward the concept of “participatory state”. In addition, some scholars understand participatory governance as “democratic governance”, “citizen governance”, “decentralized governance” and “participatory development” [1].
Research at the practical level. It is mainly divided into: 1) participatory budgeting. Participatory budgeting, as a new form of local governance, was first realized in Aggre, Brazil in 1989. It mainly emphasizes that different stakeholders in the society decide the government’s fiscal expenditure and investment decisions from the bottom up [2]. 2) Community participatory governance. Community participatory governance is embodied mainly through neighborhood committees in the United States [2]. 3) Civil society and urban governance. This is mainly reflected in the opinion of some scholars that participatory governance should be gradually empowered to citizens so that they have the right to bargain, or that participatory governance projects can enhance the capacity of civil society and policy implementers to promote and realize participatory governance at the national and regional levels. 4) Rural participatory governance and sustainable development. Here it is mainly associated with a series of projects such as rural development [1].
In China, the research on the theory of participatory governance is still in its infancy. At present, the works on participatory governance mainly include the empirical study on Chinese community construction by scholar Wang Jingyao and the study on participatory local governance edited by scholars Yu Sunda and Zhao Yongmao.
In terms of theoretical construction, scholar Zhang Kangzhi put forward in “on participatory governance, social autonomy and cooperative governance” that participatory governance is cooperative governance [3]. In an analysis of participatory governance theory, Liu Jia proposed that the emergence of participatory governance is a revision of representative system practice and a return of participatory democracy theory that attaches importance to democracy [4]. Scholars Li Bo and Yu Shui believe that the key to participatory governance is to establish the subject qualification of citizens to participate in democratic life by empowering citizens [5].
At the practical level, there are mainly: 1) participatory budgeting. Scholars Ma Haitao and Liu Bin put forward the existing problems and root causes of participatory budgeting in China by analyzing the current situation of participatory budgeting practice in China, and put forward the reform ideas of combining upper and lower, pilot promotion, collaborative promotion and systematic planning [6]. By analyzing the conditions, design and performance of participatory budgeting system in Xinhe town, Wenling city, Zhejiang province, Wang Ziliang and Chen Weifeng put forward a series of reform ideas of reducing the cost of participation, improving the quality of participation, improving the budget preliminary examination system, formulating relevant laws and regulations, and realizing the connection between participatory budgeting and “PPP” public product supply mode [7]. 2) Participatory urban governance and community governance. Smile think Ma Haiyun, China orderly citizen participation in urban governance is the requirement of The Times, but in the face all kinds of difficulties in the process of present the disorder of the citizen participation in urban governance, the trend of therefore put forward to ensure ordering of citizen participation in urban governance should change related subject concept, pay attention to the construction and improve the system of laws and regulations and the optimization of digital environment, [8] at the same time to pay attention to learn useful experience. In the process of participating in community governance, there are also some phenomena such as unclear relations, weak self-organization ability and lack of civic spirit among the participants. Similarly, it is necessary to realize orderly and effective civic community participation by cultivating a sound self-organization management system and improving citizens’ awareness of participation [9]. 3) Rural participatory governance. Yang Dezhi found that the social subject was faced with the problems of legitimacy, capital, talent and governance ability in participating in rural governance by discussing the status quo of non-governmental organizations’ participation in rural governance, and proposed that the government should create a good environment for the social subject to participate in rural governance and form a benign interaction with it in competition and cooperation [10]. Bamboo Zhi-Zhong Shao, based on the Yao nationality in Guangxi ling group the case study of community organizations in rural governance problems, stressed the importance of community organizations social governance main body status, think as rural community organization to participate in governance embodies the concept of democratic governance, is beneficial to realize the functions of community co-management, and promote the construction of harmonious society [11].
The emergence of participatory governance theory is inseparable from people’s in-depth understanding of “good governance”. With the development and maturity of civil society, people’s interest in the study of participatory governance theory has remained constant.
In deepening democracy [12] : institutional innovation in empowerment participatory arrangement, Althew Von and Eric Wright analyzed five experiments of participatory governance and proposed three basic principles of participatory governance, namely: 1) Practical orientation. That is to focus on specific, practical problems; 2) Bottom-up participation. Ordinary people who will be closely affected by these issues will be included in the process of participatory governance. 3) Consultation or deliberation for settlement. In view of these three characteristics, relevant system design is proposed, which are: 1) Decentralization. Empowering local organizations with public decision-making power; 2) Centralized monitoring and negotiation. Connect local organizations through accountability, resource allocation, and communication for more centralized monitoring; 3) Generate and utilize new systems to address specific practical problems rather than define these transactions as informal and voluntary.
In his book participatory governance for poverty reduction, Snyder elaborated the connotation of participatory governance by defining two basic principles of participatory governance. He believed that participatory governance means more comprehensive and complete information, which can help policy-makers make more effective decisions and produce more effective output [13]. The second fundamental principle of participatory governance is that it requires effective accountability to avoid moral hazard and agency problems. In Snyder’s opinion, compared with the traditional decision-making process, participatory governance emphasizes that the government mainly promotes the development of democratic governance, listens to the voices of various subjects, authorizes relevant social subjects and pays attention to the responsibility of citizens to make decisions in priority. At the level of bureaucratic activities, attention should be paid to the decentralization and decentralization of power, the orientation of specific problems and participation in regulation. In the learning model, the emphasis is on bottom-up rather than top-down; the analysis and behavior are mainly based on local citizens and “insiders” who have interests in related issues.
To sum up, participatory governance refers to the process in which citizens and social organizations who have an interest in policies participate in public decision-making, resource allocation and cooperative governance together with the government through empowerment. The main features of participatory governance are:
1) The government is the initiator of governance, and government regulatory organizations tend to be flat [14]. In participatory governance, the government is the main initiator of governance. The goal of local governance is to realize the effective supply of public goods and services. As the initiator, the government can effectively organize and realize the maximum effectiveness of public services and products. In addition, advocating participatory governance scholars believe that the hierarchy of traditional bureaucracy abstemious, top-down organization management form not only limits the channels of related interest subjects to participate in social governance, at the same time also makes the government in social public affairs management exist such problems as low efficiency, reliability and validity of the result, participatory management emphasizes on social affairs management, the government’s organizational structure should be flat, to narrow the distance between each main body to participate in social governance.
2) Empowerment. The foundation of participatory governance is the diversification of participants [15]. To realize the diversification of participants, empowerment is the first step to realize participatory governance. Empowerment enables people to have the ability to know their real situation and take actions to improve their situation. To realize participatory governance, it is necessary to ensure that relevant subjects have the ability and right to participate in the affairs of social governance.
3) Focus on participation. Participatory governance theory is a kind of governance theory, and “participation” is the proper meaning of “governance”, without “participation”, there is no “governance”. Participatory governance theory, as a new governance model, is the promotion of “strong democracy” and “consultative democracy”, a governance that emphasizes citizen participation and the return of civil rights. Compared with previous theories of democratic governance, participatory governance pays more attention to substantive participation, which is manifested in the inclusion of ordinary people or even vulnerable people who have been excluded from the participatory subject for a long time in the past, emphasizing the behavior and process of participation and bottom-up participation [4].
4) Government-social cooperation. Participatory governance emphasizes the cooperation between the government and society, in the point of view, the basic idea of the personnel of internal bureaucracy, including officials and experts are unable to get all the information to improve the social governance, [16] in social governance, government plays the main economic regulation, market supervision, provide public products and public services, and maintaining social order, therefore, efficient and responsible government plays an important role in participatory governance; on the other hand, civil society also plays an indispensable role in social governance affairs, and it is precisely because of citizens’ participation that participatory governance has its significance.
5) Focus on information communication. Participatory governance in the process, to ensure the effective participation by different interest subject, also need to guarantee about social governance affairs information exchange, because the information is not only a technical problem, is also a social and political dimensions of the problem, in the process of participatory governance, be to hold and to provide various types of information, and hold or provide the information of owners will be embodied in the process of decision making [13].
5. Case Study
As early as 2014, Houjie town of Dongguan city has implemented grid management for the communities within its jurisdiction. In general, the grid management has achieved satisfactory results, and formed a grass-roots community grid management system oriented by grass-roots problems, based on community grid and supported by information [17]. Then, in order to continue to promote the deepening of grassroots social governance in the town, the special work of “Internet + national innovation and security” was carried out comprehensively in April 2016.
1) Emphasize the role of government
The implementation of Houjie town’s work mode of “Internet + national creation and security” is first of all the concrete performance of the grass-roots government’s initiative in detailing and implementing various reform measures of “administrative decentralization and service” at the higher level. In administrative management practice in China, the government has always been major players in the national governance system and implementers, from past to now, the civil society from scratch, from the primary bud to today’s growing, government activities always affects all aspects of the social governance, had to admit that due to the development of civil society in China is not yet mature, many of the democracy practice still need government as dominant promote implementation, therefore, Houjie town, “Internet + universal creates peacefully” with “12345” in the execution of work, the first emphasized the party as the core to promote social management innovation, is required in the process of participatory governance, The government should play the overall role of regulation and control, ensure that reform and innovation do not take detours or wrong paths, and realize the “limited play” of government functions. In addition, the “4” in working method is to build 4 kinds of grid namely, among them, the functional grid of party construction and other 3 kinds of entity grid overlay, and on this basis lead these 4 kinds of grid, also put the government in the role of designer of participatory management, controller. In governance theory requires that the repositioning of the role of government, participatory governance as one of the governance theory also has called on the government role, to reposition the inner meaning of participatory governance emphasizes the problem of the relationship between the government and society in the process of social governance, and to achieve social participation, the improvement of the legitimacy of the government policy, the government’s function, structure and power operation way and so on all must carry on the corresponding adjustment, the government is the organizers of the participatory governance, but also realize that the government’s responsibility and the ability to adopt new tools and techniques to control and guide the organization mode and management mode of change and improve [15]. Therefore, Houjie town through the use of “Internet +” technology, reset of the achievement of the government regulation pattern, among the regulation pattern, the social main body through a mobile phone, two platform, can realize the supervision and management of social affairs, found that the problem solves promptly, community security hidden danger, the different model down the hierarchy of layers of reporting to reflect problems and through top-down message time consumes large handling, and five team consists of the construction of “national creates peacefully”, the government regulatory organizations tend to be flat, Houjie town has achieved a steady decline in the incidence of various safety management risks since 2016.
2) Empowerment and participation
“Participation” is the focus of “participatory governance”, and its participants are mainly the relevant social subjects in the society who have an interest in the problem. To realize the participation of social subjects, first ensure the rights and responsibilities of the participants, so that they have the ability and right to participate in social governance becomes an important matter. “National creates peacefully” construction mainly includes five work teams in party affairs worker, grid, auxiliary police, security and volunteer this five kinds of main body, it is important to note that in the process of social governance, the five kinds of main body belongs to directly participate in social governance, directly in front of the main staff social affairs, will “creates peacefully”, will power and responsibility of the government control is devolved to the five groups of “creates peacefully”, is actually a process of empowerment. And in the execution of work “national creates peacefully”, carry out a list of three series, respectively from the system to determine the affairs of the affairs of party building, enterprise mandatory operation, grid into matters specific affairs, to delimit the scope of the main body of governance and the transaction, make empowerment more meaningful and operationalization, rather than in the past that only emphasize the overall sense of empowerment and don’t pay attention to the essence of empowerment, different social main body in the process of participating in social affairs governance guided with gauge can depend on, to improve the efficiency of participatory governance.
Attention to participation is also the key to the smooth development of houjie town’s “national innovation and safety” work mode. During the process of the whole people creates peacefully, Houjie town, pay attention to revitalize the use jurisdiction, each with the self-organizing ability of society and the social unit, the team with self organization and management ability and social power into the work of network, including rules on enterprises, residential quarters, schools, large and medium-sized supermarkets and specialized market business, mining and use of the individual attributes “unit” [18]. To the relevant social unit biography to work network, is not only the process of empowerment to the social main body, also pay attention to the social main body in the participatory governance, an expression of personal engagement, in the past of social governance is difficult to individuals from the society, even is the vulnerable groups, such as into the network of social governance, Houjie town by social unit into the overall work of network, both played a social organization of the original self-organizing power, at the same time, through the social organization, to set up a private citizens to participate in social governance intermediary channels, the passage dispersed the interest of the individual organization, and through the whole social unit, As individuals are affected by the “unit attribute”, they will take the initiative to perform corresponding obligations in the process of participating in social governance, that is, the obligation of support and obedience, and the essential meaning of participation can be fully reflected.
In addition, participatory governance emphasizes participatory behavior and processes. In Houjie town, more than 600 households will become the main body of the east industrial city as an example, through the work network construction, will originally need the government to spend a lot of administrative cost of daily supervision unified by the marketing manager is responsible for inspection work, through the information platform to share data on the subject, from bottom to top of actively participate in market regulation, this transaction, the participatory governance of citizens to participate in more meaningful.
3) Government-social cooperation
The operation of Houjie town’s work of “creating security for all” is itself a process of cooperation between the government and the society. Government spent 10 million yuan over gradually built in the form of joint venture “Internet + grassroots service regulation” information supporting platform, and through the cloud services and establishment of platform of seamless coupling of the two, realize “Internet + universal creates peacefully” this work mode to carry out the basic framework and preparation, in this process, the government played a dominate global, control the overall policy of reform and innovation. Convened by the social main body through the government to raise funds to establish information support platform, social unit to join the work network, work in the network, the government through the party grid connection based grid, the grid of roads, community work in the grid corresponding to the social individual, realize the interaction between government and citizen, such as the eastern industrial city mentioned above, as well as the innovation of science and technology vocational college of Guangdong province Houjie town and so on all through the establishment of corresponding grid to realize social unit specific information collection and use of, and on this basis to solve the related problem. In the process of government-social cooperation, when the government attaches importance to the strength of social subjects, it is often able to achieve good results, give full play to the strength of social subjects, and improve the enthusiasm of social subjects to participate in social governance voluntarily through empowerment, clear division of matters management, etc., so as to form a benign interaction between government and social cooperation.
4) Focus on information communication
The service sub-platform of “Internet + national creation and security” was originally an extended system on the main platform of “Internet + grassroots social governance” in Houjie town. The main service object was the subjects of social governance. It seamlessly connects the main platform in terms of functions, and continuously collects, upmits and shares information within the jurisdiction through the development and application of various mobile phone apps. Meanwhile, the government information also realizes the information disclosure and diffusion through the seamless connection between the two service platforms. According to the views of Snyder, participative governance is the first element of information, has complete and vital decision information, to ensure the effectiveness of participatory governance, [13] the formation and development of participatory governance collaborative network depends on the effective communication of information, if the rightist network to establish their own information barrier between different subjects, there is information asymmetry between work subjects, and so on and so forth, collaboration would die. Houjie town, through the way of “all the people create security”, forms the bottom-up information sharing mechanism from the source, promotes the government departments to break down the information barrier, and promotes the formation of the collaborative network of participatory governance.
6. Some Thoughts on Houjie Sample
The working mode of “Internet + national creation and security” in Houjie town, Dongguan city provides a reform idea for the grass-roots government of China to realize social governance innovation. However, whether the success of “Houjie sample” can be replicated, the following points should be noted:
First of all, the “universal creates peacefully” Houjie town of conduct is based on the original have achieved better results grid governance reform, Houjie town, since its launch in 2014 community grid management, has basically formed the basic problem oriented, based on grid into a community, with information to support the grassroots community grid management system. And since 2013, Houjie town, has been working on promoting social security police, civil defense, busy, think tank, “four one” three-dimensional, intelligent building, through the construction of a class of video, 2 kinds of video, three types of video and construction of box type L bayonet simple and easy way to build a “tight dragnet”, within the jurisdiction of this means that the implementation of the “national creates peacefully” have better social foundation and technical support, and in the process of construction of the above system, Houjie town, raise funds by means of joint venture construction corresponding information support system, As Dongguan is a city with a relatively developed economy in the east of China, its capital can still be raised through a joint venture construction platform, but for the city with a relatively backward economic development in China, the collection of capital may be difficult to achieve, and the construction of early community organization and management mode will be discussed.
Secondly, information supports the seamless link between the main platform and the sub-service platform, realizing the communication, sharing and utilization of information to the maximum extent. But the huge information support system in the process of operation will produce many useless or repetitive information, information redundancy, and all social work main body through the phone APP to send information, large quantity of information may cause some information be ignored or the government to respond to, and so on and so forth, eventually lead to information supporting platform function is restricted.
7. Conclusion
The successful implementation of the work mode of “Internet + national creation and security” in Houjie town, Dongguan city, Guangdong province is not only a concrete response to the core content of the reform of “streamlining administration and delegating power, combining decentralization with management and optimizing services” of the superior departments, but also a manifestation of the deepening of modern democracy. “All the people create security” pays attention to the participation of citizens, the sharing of information, the empowerment of relevant subjects and other features of the community to achieve social governance innovation of local grass-roots governments have reference significance, but in the process of reference, we should be based on the specific situation of the corresponding adjustment, in order to deepen the reform and development of the democratic system.