Management, Guidance and Service

Government function transformation is often understood as a shift from a "management-oriented government" to a "service-oriented government." However, this binary framework cannot fully explain the coexistence of regulation, value guidance, and service responsiveness in modern governance. Drawing on classical public administration, new public management (NPM), the New Public Service, public value theory, holistic governance, and behavioral public administration, this paper proposes a dynamic balance framework of three government functions: management, guidance, and service. The core argument is that these three functions are not linear substitutes but correspond to three different pathways to good outcomes: management restrains harmful behavior through legitimate coercion ("countering evil with evil"), guidance cultivates public rationality through moderate intervention ("promoting good through evil"), and service reduces social hardship through public provision ("dispelling evil with good"). The weight of each function depends on the dominant relational form in a given governance context, rather than on a fixed functional hierarchy. The paper further anchors the service function in people's multidimensional legitimate desires for private good and proposes three criteria—publicness, legitimacy, and sustainability—to prevent the unlimited expansion of government responsibilities. It also develops a linkage mechanism among the three functions, including three initiation modes, positive and negative feedback loops, and synergistic boundaries. China's reforms of "delegating power, improving regulation, and optimizing services" (fang-guan-fu), the Fengqiao Experience in the new era, and responsive governance practices such as "handling complaints upon receipt" (jiesu jiban) show that government function transformation is not a simple weakening of management and strengthening of service, but a recombination and dynamic calibration of management, guidance, and service. The framework helps move beyond the binary opposition between regulation and service, and provides a new analytical instrument for interpreting China's government function transformation and the modernization of state governance.