Chapter 6 Section 1 Administrative Division Level and Management Range

Any administrative organization must be divided into several management levels, each level has a certain range of management, and there is an inverse proportional relationship between levels and ranges. If the number of levels is large, the management range of each level will be small; The magnitude is large.The administrative division of a country should also be divided into several levels, and the number of levels is the most basic element in the administrative division system.Generally speaking, the more levels there are, the farther the upper and lower barriers will be, and it will be difficult to implement government orders and make it difficult for the lower level to communicate, and it will be more difficult for the central government to carry out effective administrative management.Therefore, from the perspective of centralization, it is required to have as few levels as possible, but due to the limitation of the scope of management, the levels cannot be reduced arbitrarily.

The core of the evolution of administrative divisions in the past dynasties of China is the change in the level of administrative divisions. This change embodies the evolution process between centralization and decentralization.According to the changes in levels, the political divisions from the Qin Dynasty to the early years of the Republic of China can be divided into three stages.The first stage was during the Qin, Han, Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, which lasted 800 years, and the administrative districts changed from a two-level system to a three-level system; A cycle of three-level system; the third stage is the Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties and the early years of the Republic of China, which lasted 650 years, and the administrative districts were gradually simplified from a multi-level system to a three-level system, and even a short-term two-level system.