Executive Unanimity: An Investigation of the Reforming of Public Function Organs in China (Appendix: Observation of a Community Library)

Nonexclusive public consumption goods can, in general, be classified into two categories, namely, those that have physical form, such as national defense, and those that do not have physical form, such as all sorts of institutions and regulations. This categorization of public goods reflects two levels of personal choice in terms of collective decision making, that is, the executive level and the constitutional level. In constitutional collective decision making, the individual within the collective has to choose the rules that subsequent decision making will have to follow; in contrast, executive decision making is one in which a choice in terms of public goods is made on the basis of decision making rules and criteria that have already been fixed.