随着我国治理能力与治理体系现代化建设不断深入，政府行政任务实现方式也得以不断丰富，更为多元的主体参与到法治国家建设之中。在给付型、多元参与型行政任务实现方式不断出现的社会背景下，行政协议作为一种兼具“行政性”与“契约性”的行政任务实现手段，逐渐被行政主体适用于社会管理的各个领域。然而，行政协议数量的不断攀升的繁荣表象背后，解纷过程中所呈现出的矛盾也日益凸显。通过对行政协议研究方向进行梳理发现，虽然在行政协议规范、行政协议过程以及行政协议救济三个大方向上均有丰硕成果，但是行政协议识别作为行政协议履行和救济的起点，一方面研究较少，另一方面在识别要素选取、各要素内涵与外延确定等核心问题上却仍然存在较大争议。“哪些协议应被定性为行政协议”这一问题应是对争议进行实质审查的前提和基础，决定着审查中的法律适用问题，也影响着审查结论。明确且行之有效的识别方法能够为司法实践提供可参考的确定性指引，避免审判机关在面对庞杂的非典型行政协议时落入“同案不同判”的窠臼，因此该问题研究兼具理论与实践价值。

本文在第一章探寻行政协议这一新型柔性治理手段的诞生背景及其理论依据，寻找其法理落脚点以及本质上与民事合同的区别之处，抓准建构识别方法的基础支点。进而，在第二章梳理目前学界对于行政协议识别方法的探讨，发现我国识别方法随实践不断深入而形成的转向，并寻求尚未得到解决的研究缺口所在。接着，在第三章聚焦于司法实践领域，通过对裁判文书网中文书进行筛选并对比分析，分析行政协议识别对后续该协议效力判定等具体争议进行司法审查时的影响、现有司法审判中呈现出的识别思路以及最高人民法院公布的典型案例中对识别方法完善的取向，形成依托于我国审判实际的识别方法现状。最后，在前述三章的研究基础上，对识别要素选取不一、要素内涵不明确、识别顺位未成体系的问题分别予以回应，并对识别争议较大的非典型行政协议的路径予以完善，探索双阶层的识别方法。具体而言：在第一阶段仅对形式要素进行审查，并对主体要素的内涵合理性扩张，使得更多协议纳入“合法性”与“合约性”的双重审查中；在第二阶段，以非行政机关一方主体所承担的权利与义务为标准，对非典型行政协议进行类型化区分，对实质要素即目的要素与内容要素进行审查，在必要时引入程序正当原则、比例原则、同步原则以及信赖利益保护原则作为补充，根据不同类型协议适用更为贴合其权利义务关系的法律原则，以期能够无遗漏地识别未被法条明文规定出的非典型行政协议。

As China's governance capacity and the modernization of its governance system continue to progress, the implementation methods of government administrative tasks have become increasingly diverse, with a broader range of entities participating in the construction of a rule-of-law state. Against the backdrop of a society witnessing the emergence of administrative tasks involving the granting of benefits and the engagement of multiple stakeholders, administrative agreements, characterized by their dual nature of “administrative” and “contractual” elements, have gradually found application across various domains of social management by administrative bodies. However, behind the apparent prosperity of the increasing number of administrative agreements lies the escalating contradictions emerging during dispute resolution processes. Upon reviewing the research direction regarding administrative agreements, it is noted that while substantial progress has been made in areas such as normative frameworks, procedural aspects, and remedies concerning administrative agreements, the issue of identifying administrative agreements, which serves as the starting point for their enforcement and remedies, remains relatively underexplored. There exists significant controversy, particularly regarding the selection of identification criteria and the determination of the connotations and extensions of various elements. The question of “which agreements should be classified as administrative agreements” is a prerequisite for the substantive scrutiny of disputes, determining legal application issues during review and influencing review conclusions. Establishing clear and effective identification methods can provide judiciary practices with referential guidance, thereby avoiding inconsistencies in judicial rulings when faced with complex atypical administrative agreements. Thus, the theoretical and practical significance of this research topic is underscored.

This paper explores the background and theoretical basis of administrative agreements as a novel flexible governance mechanism in the first chapter, aiming to identify its legal basis and distinguish it from civil contracts to establish the foundational points for constructing identification methods. Subsequently, it reviews discussions within academia regarding identification methods of administrative agreements in the second chapter, revealing the evolving direction of China’s identification methods and identifying research gaps yet to be addressed. Moving forward, the third chapter focuses on the field of judicial practice, analyzing the impact of administrative agreement identification on subsequent judicial reviews of specific disputes, examining recognition approaches evident in existing judicial practices, and highlighting the orientation towards improving identification methods evident in typical cases announced by the Supreme People’s Court, thereby depicting the current status of identification methods grounded in China’s judicial reality. Lastly, building upon the research in the preceding three chapters, this paper addresses issues such as inconsistent selection of identification elements, ambiguous connotations of elements, and the lack of systematic identification prioritization, and refines the paths for identifying non-typical administrative agreements with significant identification disputes, exploring a dual-tier identification method. Specifically, in the first stage, only formal elements are scrutinized, with a rational expansion of the connotations of substantive elements, enabling the inclusion of more agreements in the dual review of “legality” and “contractuality”. In the second stage, non-administrative entities’ rights and obligations serve as the standard for distinguishing non-typical administrative agreements, and substantive elements, namely, purpose and content, are examined. Additionally, procedural fairness principles, proportionality principles, synchronicity principles, and principles protecting reliance interests are introduced as supplements when necessary. Different legal principles are applied according to the types of agreements, aiming to comprehensively identify non-typical administrative agreements not expressly regulated by statutes.