Abstract: In the grass-roots governance, the incentive mechanism is matched with the governance affairs, i.e. affairs of different nature go with different types and intensities of incentive measures, among which governance affairs, also known as political tasks, bear strong political incentives. In grassroots units such as county-level departments, township streets are found two kinds of affairs of different nature, namely, routine work and “tasks assigned by leaders”. The former refers to administrative affairs within, falling into staff's responsibility who occupies the post. The latter refers to those without but leaders attach importance to, and thus labeled as “political task” with a strong incentive effect. In practice, there is a flexible space in-between: the staff may either choose to fulfill his/her duty, or choose to take both into account, an important indicator to an assessment of one's performance in grassroots units as a uniform criteria is hard to make due to a great disparity between jobs of different posts. Those taking extra work are labeled as so positive, progressive and capable that they are easily recognized and valued by leaders, thus their political status higher and promotion more likely. Such a mechanism does not follow the logic of Western bureaucracy while keeps a certain distance from Chinese Relationism; in addition, it integrates the characteristics of matter- orientedness and personality. On the one hand, this mechanism takes the governance affairs or problems as the benchmark to make the incentive match with the governance affairs, thus bearing strong pertinence, guidance and stipulation. On the other hand, it offers main leaders greater autonomy in the selection and evaluation of governance affairs or problems, thus the personnel incentive with stronger flexibility, adaptability and personality brand.

Key words: bureaucracy, central task, duty-bound tasks, political task, promotion tournament, department gap, personnel incentive mechanism