Reform of Comprehensive Administrative Law Enforcement at the Township Level: A Practical Path and Its Unintended Consequences

In order to consolidate the capacity of grassroots governance and to promote its standardization, the state has taken the opportunity, through the devolution of administrative enforcement authority, to implement a nationwide reform. Field research indicates that there are three primary reform paths: the stationing of enforcement personnel, the delegation of enforcement authority, and the empowering of enforcement. But there are differences among these three paths in terms of the reform intensity, the reform methods and costs, and the degree of professionalization. Township law enforcement consists of both a social response and a political response, but work by the township center has crowded out the specialized resources of law enforcement to some extent. As a result, the reform of township comprehensive administrative law enforcement has produced unintended consequences, such as a low rate of law enforcement authority, soft constraints on enforcement behavior, an increase in local financial burdens, and a weakening of the ecology of grassroots law enforcement and poor vertical and territorial coordination. The reform of township comprehensive law enforcement should be based on a holistic perspective of county governance. It is crucial to adhere to the principle of “adjusting the mechanisms without restructuring the institutions”, to clarify the functional role of townships in grassroots law enforcement, and to optimize the allocation of administrative enforcement resources at the grassroots levels.