社会杂志 ›› 2017, Vol. 37 ›› Issue (3): 1-45.

• 专题:风险与国家治理 •    下一篇

中国的集权与分权:“风险论”与历史证据

曹正汉   

  1. 浙江大学社会学系, 浙江大学地方政府与社会治理研究中心
  • 出版日期:2017-05-20 发布日期:2017-05-20
  • 通讯作者: 曹正汉 E-mail:caozhenghan@zju.edu.cn

Centralization and Decentralization of Power Structure: A Theory of Ruling Risks and Empirical Evidence from Chinese History

CAO Zhenghan   

  1. Department of Sociology, Zhejiang University;Center for Local Govermance Studies, Zhejiang University
  • Online:2017-05-20 Published:2017-05-20

PDF

1800

摘要：

在中国历史上，中央集权与地方分权的关系经历了一系列重大演变。这些演变给我们提出如下三类问题：第一，在地方政治体制上，为什么一部分王朝在开国初期采用了分封制，而当王朝稳定下来之后，却又谋求削藩?第二，在边疆和西南少数民族地区，为什么元代和明代采用“土司制”，清代却推行“改土归流”?第三，在省级政区和省级政府的设置上，为什么汉人政权表现出兴废不定和周期性循环，而游牧民族建立的中原王朝却不存在这种循环?此外，清代之后建立的汉人政权为什么又打破了这种周期循环，建立起稳定的省级政区和统一的省级政府?本文论证了上述问题可以用“风险论”——即中央政府追求“统治风险最小化”的行为及其面临的约束条件——来解释，还同时比较了“风险论”与“帝国的治理逻辑”和“行政发包制模型”在解释能力上的差别。

Abstract:

In Chinese history, the power relationship between the central and local government has undergone perennial and critical changes. These changes have given rise to three questions: First,why did some dynasties adopt feudalism early on, only to curtail local authority in times of stability? Second, why did the Yuan and Ming dynasty employ a native chieftain system, while the Qing dynasty struggled to bureaucratize the native officers in ethnic minority areas?Third, why were the dynasties of the Han ethnicity so hesitant to set up a provincial government, but nomadic societies did not view this as a dillemma? Furthermore, why was the ethnically Han Qing dynasty able to break down these contradictions and create a stable provincial government and provincial state? This paper demonstrates that these changes can be explained by the propensity of the rulers to minimize the ruling risks and the constraints they encountered. Specifically, the ruler's decision to centralize or decentralize power was constrained by certain challenges, such as fiscal and administrative costs, military technology and political competition. These constraints impelled the ruling class to deviate from the system of prefectures and counties. Under these circumstances, the central government had to endure relatively higher social risks and risks of delegating power. The central government, however, would reduce social and delegate risks so long as constraints were loosened, which triggered the evolution of the power structure between the central and local government. Another potential driving force behind the changes of power structure came from the dynamic between social and agency risks. When the social risks or agency risks increased, the central government would readjust the centralization and decentralization of power among different government levels to control the rising risks.