Envisioning Public Administration as a Scholarly Field in 2020: The Quest for Meritocracy in the Chinese Bureaucracy

摘要

A decade from now, high on the public administration academic research agenda . in China will be developing a theory and explanation for the relationship between politics and administration in the Chinese bureaucracy. The People's Republic of China took 20-odd years to promulgate the Civil Service Law of 2005 (which became effective January 2006). The law is a complete throwback to an earlier effort-the 1993 Provisional Regulations of State Civil Servants-that sought to establish a separate, self-regulatory civil service andrnto disentangle it from the party bureaucracy. The most interesting aspect of the reform process has been a policy inversion that transforms the root of the problem into the prescription for solving the problem.