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“The Power of the Purse” of Local People's Congresses in China: Controllable Contestation under Bureaucratic Negotiation*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 August 2015

Jun Ma  and
Muhua Lin
Jun Ma
Affiliation:
Centre for Chinese Public Administration Research, School of Government, Sun Yat-sen University. Email: junma2015@sina.cn.
Muhua Lin*
Affiliation:
School of Public Management, Guangdong University of Finance and Economics.
*
Email: muhua99@163.com (corresponding author).
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Abstract

Since the 1999 budget reform, and for the first time in China, local people's congresses (LPCs) have begun to exert “the power of the purse.” Based on our fieldwork and survey, we argue that while LPCs have strengthened their budgetary oversight since the reform, they continue to employ a strategy of “embeddedness.” Although certain LPCs have become more contentious, they tend to veil contestations in bureaucratic negotiation in order to avoid uncontrollable budgetary conflicts. The strategy adopted by LPCs in budgetary oversight provides a case for examining the recent debate over the behaviour patterns of LPCs in legislative oversight.

摘要

1999 年预算改革以来, 中国的地方人大首次开始行使“钱袋子”的权力。我们的访谈和问卷调查发现, 尽管地方人大在预算改革后开始加强预算监督, 它们仍然沿用以前的“嵌入”策略。虽然一些地方人大在预算监督领域开始变得比较有竞争性, 但是, 为了避免引发不可控制的预算冲突, 它们倾向于将这种竞争限制在一种官僚协商的范围内。可以说, 地方人大在预算监督领域的行动策略, 对于最近关于地方人大监督行为模式的争论提供了很好的实证检验。

Keywords

budgetary oversightembeddednesscontrollable contestationbureaucratic negotiationChinese local people's congress预算监督嵌入可控的竞争官僚协商中国地方人大
Type
Articles
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 223 , September 2015 , pp. 680 - 701
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 2015 

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Footnotes

*

This research was supported by the 2012 research fund (12JJD840010) of The Centre for Chinese Public Administration, Sun Yat-sen University, and the National Social Science Fund (13CZZ034). We are grateful to the two reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions.

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