Page 38 - 《社会》2021年第4期

纵向约束体制

sufficient capacity to defend its territory, enforce laws, and maintain social order， but at
the same time， its actions must be regulated. In theory, two mechanisms have been
proposed to address this problem: horizontal鄄mutual constraint and vertical鄄mutual
constraint. The horizontal鄄mutual constraint refers to the horizontal separation of power
within the same level of government， such as the separation of legislative power，
judicial power， and administrative power， to form a relationship of checks and
balances. The vertical鄄mutual constraint refers to a mutual relationship among central
supervision， local governance and social accountability to constrain the power of the
central and local governments， especially of the latter， through the hierarchy of
division of powers from the central government to local governments and lastly， the
society. In China， the horizontal鄄mutual constraint mechanism is hard to be functional
because of the centralized Junxian system. However， the multi鄄level governance
structure derived from the centralized Junxian system offers China the possibility of
adopting the vertical鄄mutual constraint mechanism. Thus， for China， how to construct
a vertical鄄mutual constraint mechanism and how to adopt the mechanism are the major
concerns of state鄄building and state governance. Historically， Chinese scholars have
made systematic studies of these issues. The direction of their exploration is to construct
the relationship between the state and society based on the concept “Mandate of
Heaven”（tianming） and expand it into mutual constraints between the central
government， local governments and society. The significance of this exploration is that
it reveals two important conditions for the full functioning of the vertical restraint
mechanism. One is the separation of government and governance， and the other is the
separation of dominion and administrative authority， in so doing it forms a mode of
combining centralized government with decentralized administration. This paper
characterizes this mode as the vertical-mutual constraint system.
Keywords：Junxian system，centralization，decentralization，horizontal鄄mutual constraint
mechanism

一、导论

国家建构的难题之一，是国家（state）既要有足够的能力保卫疆域、
实施法律、维护社会秩序，同时，其权力又要有所约束，防止被滥用并用
来欺压人民（Weingast， 1995； Qian and Weingast， 1997）。 从理论上说，有

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