作者：陈帮锋
作者介绍：厦门大学法学院副教授，法学博士
出版日期：2025年12月9日
内容提要 《民法典》第2条的“平等”不同于政治哲学上的平等，不以相同性或相同对待为内核。这一条文中的“平等主体”指的是相互间并不存有权力与服从关系的主体，旨在强调意思自治。“权力与服从关系”是狭义上的，即国家机关因行使职权而形成的权力与服从关系。除了这种权力与服从关系，其他社会关系都是平等主体之间的关系，都是民法的调整对象。平等主体之间的关系有兜底功能，是公法“挑剩下”的社会关系。要将狭义的权力与服从关系识别出来，难点在于如何将行政协议与民事合同区分开来。行政协议的识别以主体要素为主、职权要素为辅，而是否为了公共利益是这两个要素的判断标准。因此，在“为了谁”因果链条的指引下，国家机关签订协议若为了自身利益便是民事合同，若为了公共利益便是行政协议。
关键词 平等主体 民法典 民法调整对象 行政协议
Abstract: The concept of ‘equality’ in article 2 of the Civil Code is different from the concept of equality in political philosophy, and does not take identity or identical equivalence as its core. The ‘equal subject’ in this article refers to the subject who does not have a power obedience relationship and aims to emphasize autonomy of will. This ‘power obedience relationship’ is narrowly defined, which means that the power obedience relationship is formed by state organs in the exercise of their powers. Apart from this relationship, all other social relationships are those between equal subjects and are all the objects of regulation by civil law. The relationships between equal subjects have a fallback function, which are the remaining social relationships through public law selection. The difficulty in screening out the power obedience relationship lies in distinguishing between administrative agreements and civil contracts. The identification of administrative agreements is mainly based on the subject element and supplemented by the authority element, and whether it is for the public interest is the judgment standard for these two elements. Therefore, under the guidance of the causal chain of ‘for whom’, if a state organ signs an agreement for its own interests, it is a civil contract, and if it is for the public interest, it is an administrative agreement.