Fudan-LSE Lecture Series No.47

复旦-LSE讲座系列第47期

Title/题目: 

Unbalanced Governance rather than Good Governance: Concept for a New Theory

非平衡治理而非善治：一个新理论的概念

Speaker/主讲人:

Prof. Lisheng Dong, University of Zurich

董礼胜教授 苏黎世大学

Host/主持人: 

Prof. Yijia Jing, IGPP, Fudan University

敬乂嘉教授 复旦大学全球公共政策研究院

Time/时间: 

12:00-13:30 (Beijing Time), June 21st

北京时间6月21日12:00-13:30

Venue/地点: 

Room 805E, 8th Floor, West Sub-building of Guanghua Towers

光华楼西辅楼8楼805E会议室

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请点击链接报名

主讲人介绍/ The Speaker：

Lisheng Dong received his PhD in Political and Social Sciences from the University of Antwerp, Belgium in 1992. He was Professor of Asian Politics at the Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies, University of Tartu, Estonia (August 2017-August 2020), Marie Curie Professorial Fellow at the School of Social and Political Sciences in the University of Glasgow, the United Kingdom (June 2015-May 2017), Professor of the Graduate School, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, China. He has published 20 books and 54 referred articles and contributed to 20 books. He was the 2012 co-recipient of the Pierre de Celles Award of the International Association of Schools and Institutes of Administration. His recent monograph is titled Public Administration Theories: Instrumental and Value Rationalities. He is the co-editor of Urban Mobilization and the New Media in Contemporary China and China and the European Union. He has published in Public Administration Review, American Review of Public Administration, International Public Management Journal, International Review of Administrative Sciences and Journal of Contemporary China. He has visited numerous universities and research institutions in five continents and received grants for research from many international and national funders such as the UNDP and the European Commission as well as American, Danish, French, German, Norwegian national science foundations or development agencies.

讲座内容/ Abstract:

Definitions of ideal conditions of governance have been progressively inflated, rendering good governance more often obscures than enlightens. But we should not go that far as negating the concept of governance itself. My overview of suggested alternatives to date reveal a lack of theoretically sound and practically implementable new theory. Instead, I propose the Concept of Unbalanced Governance. It is enlightened by Hirschman’s Unbalanced Growth Theory. My basic argument is that unbalanced governance is a ubiquitous phenomenon, and the improvement of governance must break the “low-level equilibrium lock-in”. The constant deliberate creation of disequilibrium leads to spiral upgrade of the quality of governance. Then, how to break the lock-in? According to Fukuyama, there are two dimensions to judge quality of governance: the capacity of the state and the bureaucracy's autonomy. To further operationalize analysis and measurement of these two elements, I plan to consider the following key subcomponents: First, the state capacity is interpreted as consisting of both resources and the degree of professionalization of bureaucratic staff; Second, bureaucratic autonomy can be analyzed from the following elements:

• Structure;

• Oversight Responsibilities;

• Talent and Culture;

• Infrastructure.