The New Public Management Reform in Municipal Governments as Crucial Catalyst for Transition to Grassroots Electoral Democracy in China

Abstract: This research approaches public administration reform in China from a domestic perspective. Whereas recognizing that the mechanisms behind the nature differ from the principle of New Public Management (NPM) of Anglo-Saxon tradition, the reform initiatives are similar. Municipal governments were encouraged to carry out NPM Reform towards governance model since 1998 to serve dual-purpose. That is strengthening governmental organizational "3e" that economy, efficiency and effectiveness and strengthening political legitimacy and capacity of Chinese Communist Party. During the governance transition process in urban China, two interactive processes, political centralization and administrative decentralization, create tensions. This paper presents the process of administrative reform in municipal governments from a traditional bureaucratic public administration model moving towards a multi-agency, cross-sector, multi-level local governance manner. The paper identified key successful approaches of the NPM reform within municipal governments, and analyzed the new local governance model from debates of accountability, participation, transparency and responsiveness rather than effectiveness and efficiency debate. Further more, from theoretical and empirical aspects, this paper concludes that local electoral democracy is the necessary condition for governance model to produce consultative policy-making process under the autarchic regime. And this process is a "mutual security" way for political center and society for transitional stability.