Abstract: The dichotomy of academic power and administrative power ignores the importance of politics in university governance.The practice of Chinese university governance calls for more attention to the political power.Due to historical and practical reasons,politics and administration are usually not separated from each other in Chinese university governance,which partly weakens the Party's leadership in higher education institutions.This paper first identifies three essential elements in university governance,including academics,administration and politics.Based on these three elements,this paper constructs three models of university governance in China's universities:academic governance model,administrative governance model and political governance model.Through the discussion of the relative power of the three elements in the models,we further come up with 6 “ideal types” of China's university governance.In order to achieve these goals,policy makers should strive to overcome the defects pointed out by the theoretical models so as to promote the university governance reform.It is also suggested that they should understand the relationship between the trilateral powers systematically and develop a contingent university governance idea based on the coordination of trilateral powers.Furthermore,they need to critically examine assumptions about human nature shaped by power dynamics so as to establish a restraining mechanism to overcome the weakness of human nature so as to strengthen discipline in colleges and universities and improve university governance assurance mechanism.

Key words: academic, administration, politics, trilateral powers, university governance