The tragedy of the anticommons in government public management and the establishment of the system of “super ministry” in China

The tragedy of the anticommons refers to a situation in which when all right holders with exclusion rights to a property exercise such rights, the property will remain underused or idle. When the functions to provide a public goods or service are partitioned among different organs and when these organs exercise their exclusion rights and thus make the public goods or service unavailable, the tragedy of the anticommons in government public management results and in China it happens mainly because of the overlapping of the functions of different administrative agencies (here mainly referred to parallel agencies) and their conflicting policies. This can by tested by Parisi model. To avoid such tragedy, China is carrying out administrative reform and institutional restructuring in the hope to consolidate different government organs with overlapping functions and to integrate their powers. To ensure the success of the reform, the principle of check and balance should be honored so as to standardize the behaviors of government institutions.