The structural prerequisites for successful implementation of governmental performance management in China

Abstract: Advocated by the New Public Management, performance management has been adopted by many developed countries since 1980s. The Chinese government wants to improve government performance by performance management reform, but encounter a lot of difficulties. Why? Because the successful implementation of governmental performance management has its prerequisites, especially the structural prerequisites, which are the basic preconditions of successful performance management reform. The purpose of this dissertation is to answer such questions: What are the structural prerequisites for the successful implementation of governmental performance management? How is the model of the structural prerequisites used to analyze the Chinese governmental structure? We develop this model from the theories of New Public Management and experiences of performance management reform in other countries. In this model, we argued that the decentralization and coordination in governmental structure are the structural prerequisites. Then, we use Swedish governmental structure as an empirical example to explain our model. At last, we analyze Chinese governmental structure by using this model and want to find whether it conforms to this Model. We discovered that there are three typical features of Chinese governmental structure: centralization, no separation between the political party in power and administration, and overlapping of the leadership, which are the typical features of Weberian bureaucracy combined with Chinese characteristics, and are totally different from our Model. We wish our dissertation could be helpful to the performance management reform in P. R. China by providing the structural prerequisites for the successful implementation of governmental performance management.