Abstract: This paper attempts to put forward an explanatory framework from the Central Government and local levels to investigate the causes of the excessive formalism.At the local level,under the principal-agent pattern of asymmetric information,the lower-level government should send signals to the higher-level government to indicate that it has completed the task,so as to provide evidence for the higher-level government to recognize the effectiveness of the work and avoid political risks,thus this logic induces officials’ "superficial coping" behavior.At the Central Government level,after the 18th CPC National Congress,the authority of Central Government was sharply strengthened,and governments at all levels tried to ensure the completion of the policy through layers of supervision and inspection and thetransmission of pressure.However,subject to the constraints of transaction costs,grass-roots governments can only be assessed by means of technological governance,and because of its limits,the macro-restraint mechanism can only acquiesce in or even encourage the emergence of "leaving-trace formalism".Formalism cannot be regarded as a stubborn disease in our huge system,but as a natural manifestation of the political system in the process of dealing with the contradiction between the Central Government and the grass-roots governance logic,reflecting the debugging process carried out by the government around technological governance,indicating that the government is attempting to explore a path that can be realized by the modernization of the national governance capacity and governance system.

Key words: formalism, principal-agent, goverment, information, transaction cost, grassroots governance