Abstract: Straightening up the relationship between counties and townships is an important part of building a government governance system with clear responsibilities and exercising administration in accordance with the law,and it is also an inherent requirement for promoting the modernization of the national governance system and governance capabilities.After more than 70 years of reform,the relationship between counties and townships in China has experienced four stages of development:initial construction,continuous construction,reconstruction,and optimization.Over the stages mentioned above,the county-township relationship shows different characteristics:the devolution of power from counties to the townships,the integration of counties and cooperatives,simplified counties and expanded townships,and the balanced development between counties and townships.It is the result of the combined effects of the two forces of historical China and real China.From the perspective of evolution logic,the state structure form is the institutional basis for the evolution of county-township relations,political and economic system changes are the main driving force for the adjustment of county-township relations,and fiscal relationship adjustment is the main way to reform the county-township relations.Institutional decentralization is the main means of relationship development.The current relationship between counties and townships still has problems such as the low precision of the allocation of functions,the imbalance in the distribution of powers and responsibilities,the structural tension of the block relationship,and the weak standardization of institutionalized decentralization.In the context of the modernization of the national governance system and governance capabilities,it is not allowed to blindly copy the western models in terms of straightening out the relationship between counties and townships.To achieve this purpose,proceeding from China's history and reality,we must improve the government function system and strengthen the local governance capacity by improving the precision of function allocation,optimizing the balance of power and responsibility distribution,adjusting the tension between different departments,and deepening the reform of institutionalized decentralization.

Key words: national governance, county-township relations, government reform, intergovernmental relations