The Analysis of Concept of Coproduction-- Evaluation of A New Municipal Administration Model

In the 1970’s, and 1980’s the fiscal adversity many urban governments facing has become a well-recognized problem by both scholars and practitioners. As a result, various concepts have been developed within the field of public administration to provide academic point of view of describing and resolving this hard realities. To mention a few, “fiscal stress” refers to problems of over-expanded public resources. “Cutback management” denotes the dilemma of many urban governments attempting to maintain service functions and levels at the same time cutback expenses and revenues, “Retrenchment” represents the viewpoint of a more limited role of urban government by holding the expansion of population, tax base, government and services, “Revenue enhancement”, on the other hand, is a euphemism for increases in citizen taxes, users’ fees, licensing arrangement in other to promote budgets augmentation. During the same period, the concept of “coproduction” has caught many researchers attention in the same field. Despite various definitions appeared in the literature, the basic theoretical foundation of coproduction was laid on the involvement of citizen in the joint provision of municipal services. The theoretical model is quite an important innovation and revision to the conventional operation of municipal services. According to the model, government is no longer the sole producer of public goods and services. In contrast to the afore mentioned concepts, coproduction has evoked a much more positive and active response, for reducing the fiscal burden from government, promoting efficiency of services provision as well as meeting with the demand of citizens. Realizing the same fiscal difficulties now local government have in this country, it is the author’s original purpose to apply the coproduction theory to study this policy problem. The structure of this article is first to review the situation of citizen participation in municipal construction, then the feasibility of applying coproduction model into this country’s municipal services is evaluated.