Abstract: In recent years,the focus of Chinese urban base level government has experienced a fundamental shift from economic growth to public service and social management. While economic growth can be quantified more easily,public service and management can not,thus performance evaluation has to be largely dependent on "impression-based results". Under such circumstance,a new mechanism of so-called "paired competition" is put in place to pair superior vertical lines of authority (tiao) with subordinate horizontal levels of local government (kuai) on voluntary bases. Pairs will compete with other pairs in areas of public services and social management. Paired competition can facilitate close cooperation between tiao and kuai, promote innovations and create quick "impression-based results". However,the mechanism also generates incentives for excessive innovations and reluctance of adopting good practices by rival pairs. The case study detailed here is the "Community Analysis Tools" promoted by the Civil Affairs Department of District A in a major Chinese city. In addition to examine the organizational and operational logic of paired competition,this study also compare paired competition with the traditional methods of "tournament competition" and "special-purpose project system".

Key words: impression-based performance evaluation, paired competition, tiao-kuai politics, urban local governance, social governance innovation