National Strategy,Social Demand and Institutional Reform:Empirical Analysis Based on the Data of Eight Institutional Reforms from 1982 to 2018
Deeply understanding the driving factors and change logic of China's institutional reform is not only helpful to summarize the significant achievements and valuable experience in the reform,but also significant to consolidate the achievements of institutional reform.This paper takes the eight institutional reforms from 1982 to 2018 since Reform and Opening-up as research sample,focuses on micro institutions,and empirically explores the driving factors and change logic of insti-tutional reform.The results show that national strategy is an important factor driving institutional reform,institutions related to national strategy in a specific period are more likely to face reform.With the promotion of service-oriented government construction,social demand has also become an important factor that triggers the start and affects the degree of reform.Especially in the four round reforms from 2003 to 2018,social demand can not only directly trigger reform,but also promote in-stitutional reform by influencing the national strategy.It means that,the government's response to social needs has gradually shifted from the early strategic level docking to the active response through reform,and social needs have directly entered the reform agenda.In addition,except for the number of departments under the institution,other internal characteristics have little impact on the institutional reform.While the rapid growth of the number of financial support and weak eco-nomic growth will trigger large-scale institutional reform,and the impact of urbanization shift from positive guidance to reverse.Control the fixed effects of time and functional categories and use mul-tiple imputation methods to retests,it finds that the results are robust.This study not only helps to deepen the rational understanding of institutional reform,but also provides historical and theoretical reference for promoting a new round of institutional reform in the future.