Own The System

As an idea, Government Regulation(GR) can be traced back to the time of ancientGreece, when Plato had discussed the necessity of it, and even worked out a system forit, though his design was still at the initial stage. Designs about this idea can also befound in later schools of thoughts like mercantilism, utopian socialism and Marxism.However, GR in its real sense of being a complementary measure for the marketfailure was not set up until the middle and later 19th century, in the West societies. Dueto the rapid progress of GR systems in the first two thirds of the 20th century,laissez-faire capitalism was once turned into regulation capitalism.The GR system aiming at making up the market failure was not just limited to thecountries of market economy, instead it swept across the world. Meanwhile, in somenewly booming up countries or areas like Korean and South East Asia, in thosetransforming countries like China, their economies depended more than anywhere elseon GR because of their government-oriented development mode. Any disorder ineconomy and society would result in government intervening and regulating, GR wasaccepted as a "magic medicine" unfailingly worked. So blind belief and irrationalexpectation to GR permeated such societies, and government in turn, self-consciously,asked for more power of regulation, as if where there was GR, there was no socialproblems. But the experience of either the West developed countries or the developingcountries has shown that it was not the case. GR proved to be not so unfailingly asthose who designed or practiced it had expected. Regulation failures were evident, asystem emerging as a solution to social problems finally brought its own problems.Realizing this, since the 1980s, Deregulation focusing on decreasing the regulationsand rules in economic and social lives had been widely adopted, in both the developedand developing countries. In China, the government's Reform in AdministrativeExamination and Approval System launched at the beginning of the new century isalso a trial of deregulation attempt.During its more than a century history, GR has gone through a process ofarising—strengthening—loosing. Intervening the independent activities of the subjectsof right in economy and society, it has displayed both advantages and disadvantages infeatures and functions. Abundant studies have been made about it frommicro-perspectives, which lays a good foundation for further macro-perspectivestudies, such as from the relations between the nation and society, from the GameTheory of the benefit group, from the relations between national power and individualrights. This thesis is trying to make a study about GR from the perspective of politics,and deconstruct, to a certain degree, the blind belief and even obsession to GR in countries of absolute nation-superior tradition.The first chapter is a reading about the concept of GR, and introduces the writer'sunderstanding:GR can be viewed as the authoritative restriction made by thegovernment, out of the interest of the public, to the independent space and activities ofthe subjects of right. China's GR, due to its unique context of "birth", is different fromthose of the west countries. Up to the present, studies about GR are much more fromthe perspective of economics than from the politics, much more for constructing thanfor deconstructing (,which is typical in China). So this thesis is made both withnecessity and difficulty.Chapter Two is a looking back into history. As an idea, GR has long existed, fromPlato to the later thoughts like mercantilism, utopian socialism and Marxism. Thevarious designs of them can be regarded as the ideological preparation for the GRsystem formally set up in the west countries in the middle and later 19th century. Thelater strengthening of GR in these capitalist countries came actually with theirideological turn, or change from free and loose control to stricter regulation, a changeof profound origins.Chapter Three points out that as a restrictive system, GR is the logic result of thecontradictions between the public interests and the individual interests. Suchcontradictions lead to the failure of the market in coordinating different interests, andthus demand the force of the government to intervene. Such intervention meanscoordinating the conflicts by authoritative measures, preventing individual'swealth-seeking activities from damaging the public's interests, and trying to pushthem onto the road of massing up the public interests. It is for the sake of the publicinterests that the government goes into the micro-economic scope and plays a role in it.This purpose justifies the government's direct restrictions on social member'ssubjective activities politically and morally, gives GR its legitimacy. Generallyspeaking GR has functions like limiting market powers, balancing distribution,safeguarding safety and health, maintaining environment and natural resources. Suchfunctions have no doubt set up GR's position in the society.The contradiction between public interests and private interests only make itpossible for the establishment of GR. To turn the possibility into reality there must bemany other social prerequisites. In Chapter 4 "Government Regulation: Nation andSociety", the author aims to analyze the internal logic of GR's emergence byillustrating the emergence of regulation in Western countries. That is to say, the authoraims to analyze how government regulation came into being under so many socialconditions. The author points out that comprehensive crisis acts as itsmacro-background, the rising social movements as its impetus, and the graduallychanging political culture as an important condition. And the establishment of government is also closely related to the statesmen's effort. Therefore, from the pointof view of the relationship between nation and society, GR results from theinterrelationship between many social conditions and social forces. GR is principallythe choice of the society itself.Chapter 5 is an exploration into GR from the point of view of interest groups. In asense, government regulation acts as a system platform for any interest group who canpursue their own interests through this platform. So we may say that governmentregulation has a feature of interest redistribution, and any policy of regulation will leadto the changes of the relation and of patterns of interest groups. To get more interest,every interest group will compete fiercely with each other. And they have done so inthe process of regulation. Those groups who benefit from the regulation will do theirbest to seek the regulation from the government, whereas those who won't benefitfrom it will resist regulation. So a certain regulation must be the result of the gamebetween the two sides, which usually takes the form of compromise. In the game ofinterest groups, the tightly-knitted organization especially enterprises will take theupper hand.As a direct intervention to the subject of economic and social life, GRundoubtedly will relate to the liberty of the citizen. Chapter 6 analyses the relationsbetween government regulation and the citizen liberty. Liberty is the first pursuit of themankind, which plays a decisive role to personal creativity and social efficiency. And itis also an art which can make miracles. Liberty possesses both instrumental value andontological value which is above instrumental value, i.e. liberty is pursued not onlybecause of its instrumental value, but because of itself. While as an action art, liberty isdifficult to learn and master. The difficulty lies in that how to behave yourself freelywithout intruding upon others' liberty. GR is such a system to resolve the difficulty.Government regulation plays a dual role of protection and restriction on liberty. Therole of restriction is more popular because it coincide with the features of GR. It ismuch more popular especially when government regulation is overused out of utility orconvenience. Thus, at the beginning of constructing government regulation, we mustconsider the issue of how to realize the unification of liberty and utility.Chapter 7 focus on the failures of GR. The reason why government regulation ishighly expected lies in its advantage in maintaining the public interests. However, itspractice turns out to be not so successful. The failure of GR mainly lies on thefollowing aspects: its aim being unfulfilled, its cost being heavy, its power beingcorrupted, and the market rational and the development of market system beinghindered by the government. There are lots of reasons why GR fails, among which thebounded rationality of the government knowledge, the self-centeredness of thegovernment choice, the unreasonableness of the regulation system and the resistance of the social mind are the major ones. Given the logical necessity of the failure of GR, thepaper proposes that the role of the market system should be fully played, the area ofGR should be strictly defined, the transparence, of government regulation should beimproved, and the supervision and constraint to the government regulation behaviorshould be strengthened.Finally, in the last chapter, the author analyses the process of deregulation inWestern countries and illustrates the value of its connotation. The paper points out thatthe failure of GR results in the crisis of the belief in regulation. People began to call forderegulation, i.e. going back to market and making the market system play a majorrole. The statesmen make a quick response to the emergency of the new liberalismideas. With the pressure from the society, the governments of the following countriesas the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, New Zealand and Japan makedrastic changes to the system of regulation. And "Deregulation" becomes mostprominent in the Western government reformation. The "Deregulation Reform" of theWestern countries has its background and zigzag process. And deregulation doesn'tmean that the government will temporarily adjust its function, nor will it withdraw itsadministration, what it really illustrates is that human begin to go back to liberty anddevelop into greater liberty.