Reform of street and town institutions: how to classify big towns and small towns? This is how Jinan in Shandong do it.
Recently, the 12th edition of the magazine “China’s Government Structure and Personnel” published an article introducing the exploration and practice of Jinan Municipal Commission in Shandong Province in setting up street and town work institutions differently.
Street towns are the key to promoting modernization of the grassroots governance system and governance capabilities. Jinan Municipal Commission analyzed that the population and area of each street town vary significantly, and their management scope, responsibilities, and tasks are not the same. Before the reform, the main functions of the street towns were basically the same, with a lack of subdivision in functional positioning, without considering differences in population size, characteristic industries, geographical location, resource endowment, and transportation location. At the same time, some administrative agencies have many responsibilities related to public institutions, and it is difficult to distinguish administrative functions from public institution functions. There are cross-cutting phenomena of administrative and public institution functions in some departments and street towns, which easily leads to the dispersion of grassroots personnel and makes it difficult to form a working force. This requires classification and precise positioning based on the characteristics of street towns, and targeted allocation of street town institution functions.
In addition, before the reform, some street town institutions implemented comprehensive settings and flat management. Although the management level was reduced, the management scope of street town work institutions increased. Especially in urban-rural combination street towns with a large population, large area, and coexistence of communities and villages, the problem of disconnection between the existing institution settings and actual management is particularly prominent. The phenomenon of “one-to-many” and “many-to-many” coexists between street town administrations and public institutions at the district and county level. If the boundaries of work functions are not sorted out, it is easy to encounter situations where “everyone manages but no one is responsible”, which is not conducive to the normal operation and efficient performance of street towns.
For this institutional reform, Shandong Province’s overall deployment for adjusting and improving the institution settings and management system of street towns is to focus on four major functions: grassroots party building, economic development, people’s livelihood services, and safety and law enforcement. Four internal departments are set up plus one comprehensive office for party and government affairs. Four public
