The logic of the formation of supervision generalization and the dilemma of county governance

Author: Feng Chuan

Abstract: The number of supervision subjects in county-level governance in the new era has increased significantly, expanding to other county-level administrative organizations, including regular institutions dedicated to supervision and accountability, temporary supervision bodies set up around the central work, and business departments with gradually expanding supervision powers. "Generalization of supervision" has become a common trend in the practice of supervision in rural areas at the county level. The so-called "generalization" refers to an open state of outward expansion and penetration formed by the blurring of the boundaries of the original specific domain. The generalization of the objects of supervision has contributed to the abuse of territorial responsibilities, resulting in grassroots cadres falling into the predicament of being repeatedly mobilized with high intensity. The generalization of supervision standards has weakened the effectiveness of supervision and led to the rampant formalism. The generalization of the meaning of supervision has led to the rigidity of supervision and accountability, so that the behavior of avoiding responsibility has spread within the township and town governments. The deep-seated reason for the dilemma of county governance caused by the generalization of supervision lies in the excessive collection of control. The key to returning control to a state of freedom lies in ensuring the appropriate exercise of the power of supervision and further improving the operational mechanism of supervision in the countryside.

I. Formulation of the problem

The essence of oversight is control. From the perspective of state power construction, the information asymmetry between administrative levels makes agent monitoring an important part of improving the governance system. With the goal of establishing an authoritative, efficient, centralized and unified supervision system, the state has vigorously promoted the institutionalization of various means of supervision, and extended its supervision tentacles to the field of grassroots governance along the "path to the countryside" controlled by "rules and regulations".

Before the establishment of modern state power, the state has been trying to control grassroots society through various forms of supervision. 1 However, due to the limited capacity and function of national governance, national governance could only maintain a simple state at that time. 2. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the organizational density of Chinese society increased substantially, and the state's ability to supervise grassroots society was unprecedentedly improved. 3 In the era of taxes and fees, along with the issuance of administrative tasks such as tax collection and family planning, the village and the two levels were under the supervision of the higher authorities. If the county leaders see that the township work is not doing well, they will personally lead the work team to the village to do mass work. 4 Since the abolition of the agricultural tax, the state power has entered the grassroots governance space through the project, and the relationship between the state and the peasants has changed from "taking" to "giving". Comparing with the traditional period, some scholars have pointed out that the new characteristics of supervision in the countryside in the new era are as follows: the state's requirements for village-level governance have shifted from completing limited tasks to completing unlimited tasks, from completing hard tasks to completing relatively soft tasks, and state supervision has shifted from focusing on results to focusing on process, and from "presumption of innocence" to "presumption of guilt". 5. The main reason for the shift in supervision to the countryside is that driven by the equalization of basic public services in urban and rural areas, the transfer of national resources to the rural areas has been further increased, which directly brings about the problem of resource security. These problems are very likely to trigger public opinion events and bring adverse social impacts. Due to the lack of trust in grassroots cadres by the state, supervision based on rules, norms, and procedures has naturally become popular in grassroots governance, and technical governance has helped the county-level supervision of township and town cadres to reach an unprecedented level of refinement and complexity. 6

Paradoxically, more comprehensive and meticulous supervision in the countryside may not necessarily lead to a simultaneous improvement in the effectiveness of governance, but may become the main institutional source of bureaucracy and formalism in the field of grassroots governance in recent years. Specifically, although the mainland's grassroots governance has entered the stage of strengthening the state with the enhancement of the state's fiscal expenditure capacity, the extension of strict party governance to the grassroots level and the application of technical governance means,7 the systems and norms stipulated at the county level have increased the risk of professional deviance of grassroots cadres, but they have also firmly absorbed grassroots organizations into the supervision system of the administrative section system, resulting in the governance consequences of administrative dissolution of autonomy and 8 grassroots compliance with supremacist supervision.

However, the existing studies basically discuss the systemic impact of supervision on village governance under the framework of state and society, or only discuss the reshaping of the rural supervision system and its effects with the discipline inspection and supervision system as the main body. 9 In fact, the political potential energy generated by supervising the rural areas is not concentrated at the end of the governance chain of the village, but has been continuously diffused along the hierarchical context of the administrative bureaucratic system in the process of "going to the countryside". At the same time, the supervision body of the grassroots government cannot be limited to the simple discipline inspection and supervision system, because more and more village affairs that overflow the traditional hierarchical boundaries urgently need a joint response from multiple county and rural entities. 10. To deepen the research on the supervision system of grassroots governance, it is necessary to place supervision in the rural areas in the process of county governance.

Based on this, this paper focuses on the impact of supervision on county governance, refines the main changes of supervision in rural areas in recent years into the concept of "supervision generalization", and discusses the organizational basis, formation mechanism and social governance effect of supervision generalization. The study will be based on the author's April 2021 survey of LZ Town, H County, B City, Guangxi, involving 15 township staff and relevant persons in charge of counties and cities. County H is located at the southwestern tip of Guangxi, with a total population of 1,056,600. LZ Town is a Chengguan town in H County, with a population of 232,000 and a jurisdiction covering the entire county.

2. Supervise the generalized county-level organizational base

In the era of taxes and fees, the main body of supervision of grassroots governance is mainly the county-level government, and the discipline inspection and supervision system is often in a dependent position. Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the number of supervision subjects in county governance has been expanding, which is the organizational basis for the generalization of supervision. Taking LZ Town as an example, the county-level governance supervision subjects faced by townships and towns at the same time can be roughly divided into three categories: first, normal institutions specializing in supervision and accountability; the second is the temporary establishment of a supervisory body around the work of the center; The third is the business department whose supervisory power is gradually expanding.

1. A normal institution dedicated to supervision and accountability

Regular institutions specializing in supervision and accountability, including discipline inspection commissions, supervision commissions, and county supervision and examination offices. Among them, the Discipline Inspection Commission and the Supervision Commission belong to two sets of personnel, but they work together and are responsible for checking whether cadres are actively acting and violating discipline. After the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the line of the Commission for Discipline Inspection was strengthened. At the county level, the discipline inspection teams stationed in the county can supervise the various operational departments and are responsible only to the county discipline inspection commission, and no longer to the director of the bureau. In 2018, the reform of the supervision system was fully launched, and discipline inspection and supervision achieved full coverage through the "inspection team". In the same year, the Supervision Commission was established in H County, marking the extension of procuratorial power to the county level.

Before the establishment of supervision offices in townships and townships, only party discipline punishment cases could be handled at the township and township levels. After February 2021, LZ Township established a supervision office, and since then, the township has begun to have the right to handle government sanction cases. Township and township discipline inspection commissions are responsible for handling cases in their respective jurisdictions, and are also responsible for supervising and rectifying, discovering clues to problems, and handling letters and visits. If the supervision group dispatched by the township discipline inspection commission discovers a problem, it will directly draft a "Proposal for Discipline Inspection and Supervision" and orally notify the township and township staff to make rectification in a timely manner. After the rectification, the township staff shall report the results of the rectification, and the township discipline inspection commission shall directly review it.

The county supervision and examination office is an independent unit at the department level under the county party committee, which supervises the progress and effect of the business completion of the township and county business departments around the central work, and has the right to recommend that the county discipline inspection commission be held accountable. The Supervision and Examination Office carries out work from time to time, and is responsible for supervising the progress of the work after the leader assigns the task. The staff of the supervision and examination office are all part-time. If the Commission for Discipline Inspection mainly supervises whether cadres "act indiscriminately" or "do nothing," then the Supervision and Examination Office is responsible for supervising whether cadres are "slow to act."

2. Temporary supervision bodies

Temporary supervision bodies set up around the work of the center, including county-level special supervision groups and county-level leading groups. Corresponding to each central work, the county level will temporarily set up a special supervision team. There are 5 inspection teams in H County, and the specific member arrangements are adjusted every year, but they are all drawn from the "ceiling cadres" at the deputy section level who are older in the township. All of these members are off-duty inspectors and are responsible for reporting the results of the inspections to the county party committee.

In order to coordinate and promote the work of the center, the county-level party committee and government will also temporarily set up a county-level leading group, and the office will be set up in the corresponding competent business department, and the director of the bureau will also serve as the director of the office. In H County, there are more than 20 leading groups involved in township work. Among them, the leading groups with greater influence include the environmental protection leading group (in charge of the Agriculture and Rural Bureau), the leading group for the renovation of dilapidated houses (in charge of the Housing and Urban-Rural Development Bureau), the leading group for stability maintenance (in charge of the Political and Legal Committee), the anti-drug leading group (in charge of the Political and Legal Committee), and the leading group for production safety (in charge of the Emergency Management Bureau) and so on. Whenever the deputy director of the bureau leads these leading groups to the townships and towns to supervise and inspect the work, the top party and government leaders of the townships and townships must come forward to report on their work.

3. Supervise the business department with inflated power

In recent years, the expansion of the main body of supervision is prominently manifested in the expansion of the supervisory power of county-level business departments. Although county-level business departments are at the same administrative level as township governments, each business department can now supervise township governments. Once the county-level business department has the right and opportunity to supervise the township government, the county-level business department will abandon the business functions and obligations it should have performed, change from the business department to the supervision department or coordination department, and turn the investigation work into various inspections.

The reason why multiple business departments can get the opportunity to supervise is that, unlike the central work with a single goal and clear direction during the tax period, the central work (such as poverty alleviation, rural revitalization, and ecological environment governance) in recent years has become more and more comprehensive, and the strong policy inclusiveness has led to the central work being able to establish a relationship with multiple business departments at the same time. In order to take advantage of the political potential of the work of the center to enhance and strengthen the importance of the department, as long as there is a possibility that the business of the department is related to the content of the work of the center, each business department will strive to bundle the routine business work of the vertical line system with the work of the center based on the interests of the department, and supervise the township government in the name of promoting the work of the center. For example, in the work of poverty alleviation, more than 60 business departments such as the Water Conservancy Bureau, the Education Bureau, and the Health Bureau of H County have found access points related to poverty alleviation, and then obtained the opportunity to supervise the township government. Township and town cadres summed up this phenomenon as "tying up a car."

The key to the transformation of the relationship between the county-level business department and the township government from the level to the upper and lower level lies in the fact that the county-level business department issues a no-document number work deployment notice to the township in the name of the party committee and government leading group that can be issued after drafting and only needs to be signed and approved by the leader, which itself means that the high-standard deployment of the work and the routine work of the business department is transformed into the central work. If the township does not complete these tasks, it will be notified by the county-level business department and will fall behind in the county-wide assessment ranking. LZ Town receives more than 30 no-number notices from various business departments at the county level every day on weekdays. Through the issuance of the document, each department has the opportunity to issue supervision indicators and assessment projects to the township while "bundling" the work of its business access center.

3. Supervise the generalized county governance logic

In the context of the expansion of the main body of supervision, the phenomenon of generalization of supervision is common in county governance. The so-called "generalization" refers to an open state of outward expansion and penetration formed by the blurring of the original boundaries of a specific field. According to the survey, the phenomenon of supervision generalization in county governance can be summarized into three types: generalization of supervision objects, generalization of supervision standards and generalization of supervision significance.

1. Supervise the generalization of objects

The direct supervision object of the supervision body is no longer "strips" but "blocks", and the "blocks" will transmit and extend the supervision pressure undertaken from top to bottom to all directly related or not directly related administrative subjects or business departments, and decompose the supervision pressure through joint and several liability. As a result, the supervisory body only directly supervises a specific "block" on the surface, but in fact indirectly supervises multiple "blocks" or "strips" behind a specific "block".

(1) "Blocks" become the direct bearers of supervision pressure

The transmission of supervision pressure from the county level to the township was originally limited to the line, that is, the supervision pressure transmission from the county-level business department to the township counterpart business department was carried out purely operationally. However, now, all business departments at the county level have issued documents to transform the supervision will of the business departments, that is, the "strips", into the supervision will of the party committee and government, that is, the "block", and supervise and evaluate the township party committees and governments. Township and township party committees and governments have become the direct assessment targets of county-level business departments, so that a governance pattern of "strong lines, weak territories" and "political tasks" in operational work has been formed.

The supervisory pressure felt by the township government comes more from the ranking after the assessment. Because ranking is a last-place elimination mechanism, the ranking situation will directly affect the political life of township leaders. In H County, more than 90% of the township work is the work assigned by the county-level business department in the name of the leading group, and these work is included in the county's supervision and evaluation indicators for townships and towns, and is scored by the county-level business department. For example, Ping An's creation of the "double promotion work" was originally a departmental business under the leadership of the county political and legal committee, but now it also lists the township party committee and government as the object of supervision and assessment. In order to promote this work, the autonomous region, city and county levels randomly conducted telephone surveys on the sense of security and satisfaction of residents in township districts, and ranked the results of the survey every quarter. If it ranks in the bottom 3 for two consecutive quarters, it will be vetoed: townships and towns cannot be evaluated for excellence, and key leaders cannot be promoted and reused. If they are ranked in the bottom 5, the main leaders of the township will also be interviewed and notified in the whole city. In the annual comprehensive evaluation, the county-level government adopts a "thousand-point assessment" for townships and towns, and each slight score difference can determine the ranking of townships and towns. This kind of assessment method does not seem to be a one-vote veto, but if the overall score ranking is low every time, it will directly threaten the political life of the township and town leaders, which will lead to the township and town leaders suffering from gains and losses in order to get a little more points.

(2) Supervise the diffusion of pressure

In order to avoid being lower in the rankings or being rejected by a single vote, the "blocks" who become the direct bearers of the supervisory pressure will further spread the supervisory pressure. There are two ways of this diffusion, one is "block-block" diffusion and the other is "block-strip" diffusion. Different from the logic of de-accountability, the diffusion of supervision pressure does not eliminate the structural position of "blocks" as direct bearers of supervision pressure, but only allows "blocks" to develop a set of subordinate pressure-sharing networks.

The "block-block" diffusion of supervision pressure is manifested in the longitudinal transmission mode of "autonomous region/province-city-county-township/town-village". For example, in Guangxi, the transmission of supervision pressure from the autonomous region to the county is manifested in the increase in the number of points deducted. The reason why there will be a layer of increase is that the party committees and governments at the next level are facing horizontal comparison and ranking competition for promotion tournaments, so they take the initiative to put pressure on themselves; Second, because the closer you are to the end of the bureaucratic system and the farther away from the center of power, the weaker the perception of direct supervision pressure, so the direct higher-level government at each level needs to convey political pressure by increasing the weight to reserve space for the possibility of delay caused by the inertia of the bureaucratic system. However, once the county-level party committee and government are interviewed and reported because they are low in the ranking, in line with the principle of joint responsibility for sharing pressure, although the township party committee and government are not the direct bearers of supervision pressure, the county-level party committee and government will also copy and pass on the political consequences it has suffered downward, and spread the supervision pressure layer by layer to the township party committee and government, which may lead to the county-level party committee and government ranking low. The secretary of the town party committee will be interviewed by the county leaders, and will be criticized at the meeting, and the discipline inspection committee will file a case at the worst. In this way, although the supervisory pressure is rooted in the autonomous region's supervision of the city level, in fact, the cities, counties, and townships all share the political responsibility brought about by the low ranking of the city level.

The "block-to-strip" diffusion of supervisory pressure, that is, the supervision pressure is further diffused to almost all subordinate business departments through the overall planning process of the party committee and government, even if the business content of some subordinate business departments is not directly related to the work promoted by the party committee and government. Nowadays, each business functional line will strengthen the strength of the business department in order to implement the work, and supervise and hold accountable the party committee and government at the next level by issuing documents. In order to avoid accountability, the party committees and governments at the next level must mobilize strong working forces to promote the implementation of the work. In particular, at the township and town levels, which have the tradition of flexible personnel deployment with a division of labor and no separation of families and mixed personnel and posts, when the township and town party committees and governments become the direct bearers of the supervisory pressure, almost every staff member in the township and town system will be mobilized by the party committees and governments to undertake the supervisory pressure from the top down. Of course, the "block-bar" diffusion of supervisory pressure is different from the "block-bar" transfer of supervised pressure. In every matter jointly promoted by the township and township mobilization stations, the secretary of the township party committee is the main person in charge. Once there is a problem with the "rules" that are indirectly under the pressure of supervision, the main body that bears the main responsibility in the end is still the "block".

2. Supervise the generalization of standards

The party committees and governments at the county level only attach importance to the completion of the work of the center, but do not pay attention to whether the supervision standards for the implementation of the work are suitable for inclusion in the assessment and evaluation. The county-level party committees and governments do not pay attention to the management of the process of formulating supervision standards, which leads to the lack of entry management of supervision standards, so that the formulated supervision standards are out of touch with the actual work. The supervision standards that should play a precise control role have been generalized due to inaccuracy, and can only be "suspended" in the actual governance scenario. Once the monitoring standards lose their precision, the relationship between the work process and the work results will be disconnected. The following analyzes the four types of generalizations of supervisory standards.

(1) Emphasize the unity of standards and ignore multiple differences

The county-level business departments set supervision standards from top to bottom, formulate unified assessment items, and ignore the differences in territorial management of township governments. However, the differences in the territorial management of township governments need to match the evaluation standards and differences in measurement scales, otherwise the supervision standards that seem to be "a bowl of water is even" actually contain great unfairness. For example, LZ Town, which is a Chengguan town, has a jurisdiction that covers the entire county, so there will be large-scale development projects that many other towns do not have. And more development projects means more opportunities for county-level business units to "bundle and hitchhib" to work with departments and oversee LZ Township. The county-level business department often refers to the affairs of LZ Town and sets up a unified assessment project for the whole county. Since many of the assessment items are missing from most other townships, the county-level business departments let other townships and towns that do not involve these assessment items directly get full marks in the supervision and assessment, resulting in the unfair phenomenon that other townships can get full marks if they do not do their work, and LZ towns not only have to do their work but may also be deducted points.

In addition, due to the large differences in the characteristics of territorial management, there is no initial condition for comparison between different townships. For example, in some townships, the industrial manufacturing industry can become an important supervision and assessment item; Some towns and villages are industrially underdeveloped, but agricultural demonstration sites have been created; Some towns and villages do not have much industry or agricultural demonstration sites. The establishment of unified assessment items by county-level business departments means that some townships and towns have been leading in some projects for a long time, while others have been ranked low for a long time. In this way, the monitoring ranking loses its politically incentive effect.

(2) The surface is accurate and objective, and the essence is vague and subjective

The setting of supervision standards emphasizes precision, objectivity, and standardization, and these requirements are often equated with eliminating the possibility of human intervention as much as possible, and the digitization of supervision information. Therefore, supervision and assessment require the use of computers to enter information, and the main body of supervision needs to verify the information on the spot, so as to eliminate the involvement of township and town cadres in the scene to the greatest extent, all of which make the supervision and assessment appear accurate and objective on the surface.

However, the content of the items included in the supervision and assessment involves a lot of inaccuracies and irregularities in life, as well as the subjective feelings of life actors. For example, when determining the household income of a rural household, the numbers entered into the computer are the numbers that are determined by the poverty alleviation working group and the township cadres chatting with their husbands at home, and with his approval. When the inspection team entered the village, the husband happened to be away from home, and his wife could not remember her income. In the case where the inspection team meets with his wife alone, and the township and town cadres are not allowed to get close to the person concerned and therefore cannot make corrections, it is very likely that the income assessed by the inspection team on the spot does not match the income registered on the computer. For example, in daily life, the ambiguity of the criterion of "whether you know Mandarin" makes it impossible for facts to be framed by the simple "yes" and "no" options in the computer system. The poverty alleviation working group and town and village cadres may fill in "no" in the system because the poor households do not have a high level of education, unclear pronunciation, and non-standard pronunciation, while when the inspection team communicates with the poor households in Mandarin, they may find that the poor households can also answer some simple questions and decide that the system should fill in "yes". This ambiguity often leads to conflicts between system entry and supervision. Based on this, the inspection group concluded that the work of grassroots cadres is not in place, and the enthusiasm of grassroots cadres will be dampened.

(3) Layer by layer decomposition and overweight, policy implementation dilemma

In the relationship between the upper and lower levels of the subordinate and subordinate levels with isomorphic responsibilities, the township government, as the direct bearer of the supervision pressure, will continue to pass the supervision standard vertically down the section system in order to build a shared network of supervision pressure. In the process of downward transfer, the supervision standard is not simply copied, but there are three situations. The first situation is that the "big indicators" are refined into "small indicators" in the process of downward transmission, which is manifested in the decomposition or even diffusion of the content of the indicators to the aspects that are not directly related to the work objectives, and at the same time, the number of indicators has increased greatly, and the supervision projects tend to be complicated. For example, targeted poverty alleviation at the central level is a big indicator of "two no worries and three guarantees", and when it comes to H County in Guangxi, it becomes "eight and one super", and when it comes to LZ Town, it is further operated as a small indicator of "four clearances and one standard", and the poor village is "eleven have, one is lower", and the closer to the grassroots level, the higher the complexity of the index. The refinement of metrics means that there are more opportunities for business departments to integrate their routine work and move forward. Each indicator may cause the work of township and town cadres to be deducted points, so the "small indicators" bring huge psychological pressure to grassroots cadres. In the second case, the "soft indicator" is manipulated as a "hard indicator" in the process of downward transmission, which is manifested as an increase in the intensity of work promotion. For example, the completion rate of the new rural insurance, which was originally levied on the principle of farmers' voluntariness, has changed from a "soft index" to a "hard index" of "95-98% must be completed by township governments" under the pressure of horizontal competition in various localities. The third situation is that the "hard indicators" are operated as two conflicting "hard indicators" in the process of downward transmission, and the logical relationship between the indicators is difficult to unify, so that the grassroots administrative subjects are in a dilemma under the supervision standards. For example, on the issue of prohibiting breeding in rural areas, policy implementation conflicts with people's livelihood protection: on the one hand, the hard indicators of supervision require the grassroots government to strictly implement the prohibition regulations and dismantle all pigsty in the prohibition and restriction area; On the other hand, the hard indicators of supervision require that local governments cannot "one size fits all" when implementing environmental protection policies. If the grassroots government strictly bans the pigsty in the prohibited area, the inspection team will hold the grassroots government accountable for implementing the policy "one-size-fits-all" and not emphasizing "the interests of the people first"; If the grassroots government agrees to wait for the farmers to sell pigs and relocate after the completion of the rectification, the inspection team will hold the grassroots government accountable for "not being resolute in the rectification attitude and not in place". Oversight standards are at odds with each other, leaving grassroots governments at a loss.

(4) Extreme thinking is prominent, and the top grid eliminates accidents

Under normal conditions, the standard of supervision should be limited to "meeting the standard". However, the supervision standards suspended in the governance site imagine the governance site as a "sterile environment", replace the bottom-line thinking with the extreme thinking of top-level management, and set up supervision indicators that do not tolerate the contingency of "small probability events". As long as there is an occasional "small probability incident" that threatens the safety of people's lives and property, the county level will pay close attention to the social impact of the incident and immediately formulate supervision standards for the elimination of all small probability incidents. For example, when a carbon monoxide poisoning incident occurred in N City, Guangxi, the supervision and inspection standards issued by the county level immediately emphasized "zero tolerance" for carbon monoxide poisoning incidents throughout the autonomous region. In the real governance scenario, it is almost impossible to completely eliminate a low-probability event.

3. Generalization of the meaning of supervision

Supervision was originally a governance tool, and its significance was to promote the implementation of work at the grassroots level. The generalization of the meaning of supervision is reflected in the self-purpose of supervision, that is, the meaning of supervision is no longer limited to being a tool of governance, but is further extended to the purpose of governance itself. Under the influence of the generalization of the meaning of supervision, supervisors often make wrong assumptions about the supervised, so that the township and town cadres who are the supervised cannot argue and appeal against the reasonableness of the supervision results. The purpose of supervision by the supervisor is not to guide the supervised to solve problems together in the interactive process of consultation and discussion, but to supervise for the sake of supervision, because the meaning of supervision itself is embedded in the direct interests of the supervisor due to generalization.

First of all, the purpose of the discipline inspection commission's inspection is to discover quality clues and to inspect, punish, and transfer cadres through handling cases. In order to play its role in the administrative ecology, the Commission for Discipline Inspection must constantly identify problems. In principle, the purpose of discipline inspection commissions in supervising and enforcing discipline is to "prevent small problems from becoming major problems" and "to punish those who have done wrong, and to cure diseases and save people." Supervision and enforcement of discipline also need to be "based on facts and with the law as the criterion." When handling cases, it is also necessary to integrate the opinions of the discipline inspection commissions at the county level and the party committees at the same level, and to listen to the opinions of the grassroots units. However, as far as many secretaries of township and town discipline inspection commissions are concerned, the act of supervising the investigation and handling of cadres and handling cases is itself a result of their work of being promoted and reused. The investigation and handling of cases by the Commission for Discipline Inspection itself also has performance rankings.

Secondly, the inspection team also regards supervision as an end in itself, and even "reducing the burden on the grassroots" can be transformed into supervision objects by the inspection team. For example, when the city-level inspection group inspects "reducing the burden on the grassroots," it must supervise the townships and towns to come up with a work plan for reducing the burden on the grassroots. Logically speaking, the focus of "reducing the burden on the grassroots" is to see how the county level can reduce the burden on the townships and towns, and the leaders of various departments at the county level should personally go to the grassroots level to investigate the increase or decrease in the township and town meetings. There is no document asking the townships to come up with a burden reduction plan. However, the municipal inspection team does not regard the purpose of the inspection as to discuss how to reduce the burden on the grassroots. "Reducing the burden on the grassroots" is just another opportunity for the municipal supervision team to increase its performance. In order to show the effectiveness of its supervision, the city-level inspection team took "the township did not come up with a specific work plan for reducing the burden" as one of the results of supervision, so that "reducing the burden on the grassroots" was also transformed into a source of pressure at the grassroots level under supervision, and then gave birth to the governance paradox of "the burden on the grassroots is getting heavier and heavier".

Thirdly, the business department only shirks its responsibilities to the government at the same level in the name of compacting responsibilities through various methods such as sub-tasking, supervision, inspection, and statistical summary, without thinking about problem solving and incentive strategies, and does not conduct research and guidance on the work of the government at the same level. For example, in the implementation of the new rural insurance policy, the social security department does not go to the rural areas to investigate, nor does it study better publicity methods, let alone formulate effective measures to encourage farmers to buy the new rural insurance, but only puts the responsibility on the township government through ranking and notification.

Finally, whether it is a political inspection by the county party committee or a township inspection led by a township leader, it is essentially a supervision oriented to the discovery of clues to problems. The "patrol team leader" sent by LZ Town explained the significance of the patrol team's work to the team members: "The meaning of the patrol is to find clues to the problem, and if you can't find the problem, you have a problem with your ability." ”

Fourth, the dilemma of county governance under the generalization of supervision

The generalization of supervision has changed the original supervision mode of the county governance system and profoundly affected the practice of county governance. The generalization of the object of supervision has contributed to the governance situation in which the territorial responsibility is abused by the supervised. The generalization of supervision standards leads to the township government falling into the logic of formalistic behavior. On the basis of the generalization of supervision standards, the generalization of the meaning of supervision has led to the spread of township and town cadres' evasion of responsibility.

1. Abuse of territorial responsibility

The formation mechanism of the generalization of supervision objects, in essence, is the localization logic of supervision pressure, which is mainly manifested in the diffusion of supervision pressure from the line departments with clear business boundaries to the party committee and government as territorial responsibility units. The process of further diffusion of supervisory pressure along the network of blocks under the jurisdiction of the Party committee and government can be attributed to the overall mobilization of the Party committee and government based on territorial responsibility. It is precisely because the localization of supervision pressure can play a role in giving the line department political potential energy and making the line department indirectly leverage more governance resources, and the generalization of the supervision object will inevitably motivate the line department to define the relevant responsibilities of business work as "territorial responsibility" under the catalysis of a certain external environment.

Under the rigid county-level governance system, the tendency of the central work from the "single-center work model" to the "multi-center work model" has led to the expansion of the central work of more and more county-level functional departments.11 The county-level functional departments have participated in the competition for the distribution of township attention. The core of the competition for the distribution of attention in townships and towns is actually to compete for the right to define the territorial responsibility of affairs. This is because the transmission of supervisory pressure has replaced the personal relationship with the principal leaders or leaders in charge of townships and townships, and has become the main way for county-level functional departments to promote work in townships and townships. The most effective way to transmit supervisory pressure is to define the relevant responsibilities of business work as territorial responsibilities with the help of the localization logic of supervisory pressure. The competition for the right to define the territorial responsibility of various functional departments at the county level ultimately leads to the abuse of territorial responsibility.

The abuse of territorial responsibility is mainly reflected in the fact that county-level departments use territorial responsibility as an excuse to transfer the relevant responsibilities of business work to townships and towns that do not have corresponding administrative power or law enforcement powers, so that work responsibilities are automatically transmitted to the depths of the grassroots governance system along the diffusion network of supervision pressure, so that townships and towns fall into a situation where multiple responsibilities are large and power is small. For example, the implementation of the Urban and Rural Planning Law was originally the responsibility of the business departments at the county level and above, and there is no corresponding administrative power below the county level, and the township and town governments can only cooperate with the competent departments at the county level to implement relevant governance matters. However, through the supervision of the generalization of objects, the county-level business departments have redefined the implementation of laws and regulations as "territorial management". If there is any problem with the implementation of the regulations, the township is responsible. Since then, the safety supervision bureau, which already has the power to punish, has also defined safety issues as territorial responsibility. In the event of a safety incident, the work safety supervision bureau will notify the township that does not have the right to punish in the name of the leading group. Originally, the main body of law enforcement for demolition and relocation was the law enforcement brigade of the county-level land department, and the township should only cooperate with its law enforcement. However, when enforcing the law, the land bureau also asked the township party committee and government to take the lead in implementing the forced demolition, so the county land bureau became the commander of the township and the supervisor who was purely responsible for the acceptance of the results of the work, and the township completely became the main body of territorial responsibility for the implementation of the demolition and relocation work.

The governance consequence of the abuse of territorial responsibility is that the township government, as a territorial responsibility unit, is repeatedly mobilized by the supervision system in the process of frequent issuance of territorial responsibility, which is unsustainable. First of all, the abuse of territorial responsibility has led to the formation of "disasters" at the rural level. This is because all supervisory bodies need to assign tasks to the village level in the form of meetings, issue supervision and inspection standards, and implement territorial responsibilities through important political ceremonies such as meetings. For grassroots cadres at the end of the supervision pressure transmission system, their daily work is often interrupted by the meetings held by each of the main bodies of supervision pressure from the top down. "Either in a meeting or on the way to a meeting" has become the norm in their work, but these grassroots cadres should have been the group of people who have the most contact with the masses and are most familiar with the masses. Second, the abuse of territorial responsibilities has led to the parallel overlap of various types of work of grassroots cadres, and the pace of work is on the verge of chaos. Under the heavy pressure of multiple territorial responsibilities, township and town cadres have no choice but to pay attention to and take seriously all matters that affect supervision and evaluation, so that township and town work no longer has "advantageous work" and "bottom-line work", and there is no distinction between "practical work" and "virtual matter". Under the premise of limited energy and time, overtime has become the norm in township work. Township and town cadres have no choice but to concentrate their efforts on handling the most difficult and difficult affairs in the course of management, such as nights, weekends, or holidays, when they are less disturbed by meetings and miscellaneous matters. Finally, the abuse of territorial responsibilities has led to excessive mental load on grassroots cadres. Many township and town cadres describe their work status as "tired", because the pressure of supervision and accountability that comes with territorial responsibilities makes them continue to work at full capacity and are always in a state of anxiety of losing their sense of control. The uncertainty and insecurity brought about by multiple supervision and appraisal make them nervous and guilty, even occasionally taking time off. Psychological fatigue and burnout among grassroots cadres have become a practical problem that urgently needs to be paid attention to and seriously resolved.

2. The proliferation of formalism

The formation mechanism of the generalization of supervision standards is fundamentally contained in the logical conflict between the rational goal of the system pursued by supervision and inspection and the rational state of life as the object of grassroots governance. The rational objectives of the system are usually decomposed by supervision and inspection into the aspects of the governance process conforming to the norms, the governance results conforming to expectations, and the governance progress conforming to the plan, etc., and presuppositing that the supervision matters are black and white, and there is no ambiguity in the judgment of right and wrong, and simplistic thinking is permeated in the practice of supervision and inspection. However, grassroots governance affairs are often full of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, and the grassroots governance system as a public administration system is itself a chaotic and complex system, which is full of chaotic and nonlinear factors. 12. When the supervision of the rural areas with the principle of simplistic thinking encounters grassroots governance, the supervision standards set according to the simplistic thinking will inevitably be generalized due to inaccuracy, which not only greatly weakens the governance effectiveness that the county-level business departments can achieve in supervising the villages, but also causes the proliferation of formalistic behaviors.

First of all, the supervision standards pay too much attention to formal perfection, and the dynamics and fallibility of grassroots work are difficult to meet the supervision requirements. Township and town cadres have to spend a lot of time in order to achieve the "formal beauty" stipulated in the supervision standards, and this is the direct cause of formalism. For example, in order to realize the beauty of the form of the assistance manual without more than two traces of alteration, poverty alleviation cadres can only re-fill the entire manual after three alterations. Some of the alterations are caused by tracking dynamic data, and with the large number of items and data in the manual, the probability of data errors is not low. However, in order to meet the "formal beauty" required by the supervision standards, the poverty alleviation cadres had to save time in contacting the masses and exchange a large number of repetitive work on the form data in exchange for the accuracy of the form. However, after all, there is no correlation between "formal beauty" and the goals and effectiveness of grassroots work, and it is useless except to continuously reproduce the formalistic behavior of grassroots workers.

Secondly, the standard setting of formal perfection in the supervision standard is too arbitrary, without considering the cost of grassroots work and the actual work needs. The right to set the standard of "formal beauty" lies entirely with the higher-level business department as the supervisory party, and the sudden change in the setting thinking of the business department will directly and completely cancel the significance of the large amount of formalist work done by the grassroots government, and the grassroots government has to cater to the new standard of "formal beauty" and re-launch a new round of formalist work, which will further increase the burden of formalism itself. For example, county-level departments originally required the poverty alleviation manual to "leave the form blank and circle 0", and if they do not circle 0 and leave a blank, they will be held accountable and reported, resulting in poverty alleviation cadres "painting goose eggs and drawing dizzy". Later, however, the county-level departments suddenly adjusted the supervision standard to "for the sake of tidiness, do not circle 0", and at this time, "circle 0" has become a problem to be held accountable, resulting in the abolition of a large number of poverty alleviation manuals previously filled in by poverty alleviation cadres, and they have to be filled in again in accordance with the new supervision standards. Detached from the cost-benefit analysis and the actual work demand, the supervision standard can only motivate the grassroots cadres to go further and further on the road of detachment from the masses.

Finally, the unrealistic setting of supervision standards has reduced supervision and inspection itself to a formalistic task. The reason why the supervision standards are unrealistic may be the result of the supervision standards ignoring the differences, ambiguities, hierarchies and occasional nature of grassroots governance affairs, or it may be the result of the supervision department arbitrarily problematicizing the phenomena that are impossible to rectify or do not need to be rectified based on the lack of professional imagination, for example, as long as there are cracks in the house, regardless of the size and number of cracks, the house will be judged to be a dangerous house. However, the characteristics of grassroots governance affairs and the "rectification problems" that cannot or do not need to be rectified will not change qualitatively because of the setting of supervision standards. The directional error of the idea of supervising the setting of standards has indeed facilitated the supervision and inspection to find problems more easily. However, once a large number of problems discovered in supervision and inspection are false problems created by the idea of setting supervision standards with errors in direction, supervision itself will become a "bone in the egg," and it will not be able to effectively regulate and promote grassroots work except for making things difficult and tormenting grassroots cadres. In this way, personal supervision has become a kind of formalistic work that reflects the degree of importance that county-level departments attach to their work. When all business departments at the county level regard participation in supervision as a "political ritual" to demonstrate their sense of existence, the formalistic work that manifests itself in excessive supervision and repetitive supervision will inevitably flood at the grassroots level.

3. The spread of accountability avoidance

The generalization of supervision standards that are divorced from the reality of grassroots governance, as well as the generalization of the meaning of supervision due to the self-purposefulness of supervision, make it impossible for grassroots cadres to make any appeals and arguments even if they think that supervision is unreasonable. In the face of rigid supervision and accountability, regardless of whether the supervision standards are in line with local realities, township and town governments must avoid mistakes and omissions in supervision and inspection under the allocation of responsibilities and powers under territorial responsibilities. Based on this, the evasion of responsibility has spread from top to bottom within the township government.

As far as township and town leaders are concerned, the generalized supervision and inspection has narrowed to the greatest extent the room for bargaining and policy adaptation to local conditions by the grassroots governments, and has prompted them to no longer consider whether the work items to be supervised and inspected meet the real needs of the masses. In order to ensure that the supervisory departments in the countryside for the purpose of discovering problems have no fault to be picked on and no responsibility to be held accountable, the township and town leaders can only carefully and prudently implement the documents issued by the higher authorities and try by all means to transform the entire township and town government into a policy implementation machine dependent on the will of the higher-level government departments through organization and mobilization, and no longer dare to make any creative interpretation of the policies, let alone reflect on the rationality of the county-level policies. In the end, the township and town governments as a whole were able to be highly mobilized around supervision and inspection, and even the work of connecting with the masses and serving the masses turned to follow the logic of avoiding responsibility.

The township and township work arranged by the township leaders to deal with the supervision and inspection as the center shows the characteristics of attaching great importance to the top goals and the occasional goals. This is because top-level goals and occasional targets are more likely to be the object of supervision and accountability by higher-level departments. The act of investing a large amount of governance costs around the top goals and occasional goals is also aimed at avoiding responsibility to the greatest extent. The emphasis on the goal of the top grid is prominently reflected in the work of targeted poverty alleviation. It is worth noting that once "precision" is indexed by the supervision and assessment system, it becomes a dead number. However, in the real scenario of grassroots governance, the "precise" targets of poverty alleviation are precisely the dynamic, differentiated, and "precise" farmers who will have the idea of dependence and "precisely" play games with grassroots cadres. In this context, supervising with rigid and precise indicators is to use static and rigid metaphysical thinking to deal with dynamic and complex affairs, which will only produce a lot of waste of resources and energy consumption, but cannot achieve the expected results. However, the top target forced the grassroots cadres in LZ to spend nearly two-thirds of their work energy to further eliminate the poverty rate of only 3%, and devote 90% of their energy to data verification with the goal of improving accuracy. Under the circumstance of avoiding responsibility regardless of the cost, it is no longer possible for grassroots cadres to care about the specific causes of poverty for rural households, let alone to help poor households effectively increase their income and enhance their endogenous development momentum. Under the supervision pressure of the top target, the logic of "precise" behavior evasion is attached, and the governance of people is finally reduced to the governance of things. The emphasis on episodic targets is highlighted by the over-investment in "preventive governance". Although the targets of "preventive management" are all small probability events that occur by chance and are difficult to completely avoid, in order to effectively avoid responsibility in rigid supervision and inspection, grassroots cadres are highly mobilized to devote a lot of energy to the comprehensive investigation and trace work. For example, in a carbon monoxide poisoning incident that killed two people in N City, Guangxi, LZ Town immediately mobilized all cadres to check all the factors that may lead to carbon monoxide poisoning within the scope of territorial responsibility, such as water heaters, gas canisters, etc., within a week, and asked the cadres of the township and town to register the ledger and take photos at each villager's house together with the village cadres. Even if carbon monoxide poisoning incidents are still inevitable after the investigation is completed, the comprehensive investigation and trace work carried out in advance can help the township successfully avoid responsibility in the process of supervision and accountability to a certain extent.

In the township and town work, which is all aimed at avoiding responsibility in the course of supervision and inspection, the township and town cadres are generally in a state of exhaustion. Township and town cadres use the term "numbness" to describe this kind of work state in which they can only mechanically complete affairs in accordance with supervisory standards and standardized procedures. In this state of work, many jobs lose their uniqueness in terms of memories, pride and fulfillment. For the majority of township and town cadres who are "not afraid of hardship but afraid that their work is meaningless," this kind of work that they "have to do head-on" and does not have much room for innovation and imagination obviously cannot give them a sense of meaning and value in their work.

5. Summary and discussion

Since the risk of grassroots self-interest dissipating state autonomy still exists,13 how to effectively monitor agents has become an important issue in modern state capacity building. In the new era when national resources continue to transfer to the grassroots society, and people's livelihood work and people's satisfaction have increasingly become the focus of the central government, strengthening the standardized supervision and assessment of grassroots governance subjects with the help of "supervision to the countryside" is considered to be in line with the overall idea of improving the modernization level of national governance, and is an important starting point for promoting and implementing the central work, consolidating the responsibility of grassroots governance, and preventing the indiscriminate actions of grassroots governance subjects.

However, this paper finds that the supervision subjects faced by township grassroots governments in the new era are no longer limited to the simple discipline inspection and supervision system, but have been extended to other county-level administrative organizations, including normal institutions, temporary supervision institutions, and business departments. In the context of the expansion of the subject of supervision, the "generalization of supervision", which is manifested in the generalization of supervision objects, supervision standards and supervision significance, has become a general trend of supervision in the countryside.

The deep-seated reason why the generalization of supervision has caused the dilemma of county governance lies in the fact that the central-local (county)-grassroots (rural) relationship, which should be free and balanced, is overly biased towards the upward collection of control. The use of supervision and inspection as a lever to collect control will certainly help to prevent local and grass-roots administrative entities from violating the law in the name of adapting measures to local conditions, and to curb the centrifugal tendency of doing their own thing. However, once the number of subjects with supervision and inspection qualifications is expanded, it often exacerbates the centralization of the routine work of county business departments. At the same time, various supervision and inspections have reduced any ambiguous space on the governance site to a binary opposition of "black and white", and the politicized discourse on the upper line in the supervision process has continuously stimulated the masses to express negative emotions based on game psychology. In the end, the upward state of control is polarized through the amplification effect of supervision and inspection, and the social governance of the whole county becomes highly tense and highly fragile due to the excessive "cleanliness" that meets the supervision standards.

In order to return control to a state of free retraction and decentralization, the key to improving the operational mechanism of supervision in the countryside lies in ensuring that the supervisory power is on the track of being exercised appropriately, and to avoid dampening the enthusiasm and subjectivity of grassroots cadres due to the generalization of supervision. The first is to restrict the right of county-level departments to localize the definition of business responsibilities. The restriction on the right to localize the definition of business responsibility is helpful to control the disorderly expansion of the main body of supervision at the county level, and then alleviate the tendency of polycentric work at the township level. The second is to establish the operational boundaries of supervision and inspection. Supervisors cannot unfettered the power of supervision in areas where they do not have the capacity to do so, turning supervision into an act of abscurity or a political performance. The third is to establish a flexible supervision system with a fault-tolerant mechanism and supervision feedback channels. It is necessary to reduce the number of top-level supervision indicators, allow the existence of occasional incidents in grassroots governance, and make supervision standards more suitable for the actual situation at the grassroots level, so as to effectively avoid the spread of formalism and evasion of responsibility caused by improper supervision.

Source: Journal of the Humanities

Fund: Ministry of Education Humanities and Social Science Research Youth Fund Project, "Research on the Governance Mechanism of 'Petty Official Corruption' at the Grassroots Level from the Perspective of Comprehensive and Strict Governance of the Party" (18YJC710086)

Author: Feng Chuan, School of Politics and Public Administration, Wuhan University