A Comparative Study On The Behavioral Strategies Of Policy Entrepreneurs In China And The US

On a global scale,policy entrepreneurs are the key group promoting policy changes.Since the reform and opening-up,the Chinese policy process has become open and inclusive and policy entrepreneurs have turned into important actors influencing Chinese policies.Relevant Chinese research tends to characterize the identity of policy entrepreneurs through case study or case comparison and presents how they get involved in and influence the policy process to increase the cognition of Chinese policy entrepreneurs and present the diversity of contemporary Chinese policy processes.However,the existing research less focuses on the differences in the behavioral strategies of policy entrepreneurs in different countries.Policy entrepreneurs are active in the policy process,so it helps understand the unique characteristics of behavior of Chinese policy entrepreneurs and increase the cognition of contemporary Chinese public policy processes to distinguish the differences in behavioral strategies of policy entrepreneurs in different countries.Aimed at characterizing and comparing the behavioral patterns of Chinese and American policy entrepreneurs,this research employs meta-analysis to systematically collect 46 cases of Chinese and American policy entrepreneurs published in mainstream public administration journals from 1999 to 2019.Through the literature review,this research establishes a theoretical analysis framework for the behavioral strategies of policy entrepreneurs and extracts 32 Chinese cases and 14 American cases from the literature to comprehensively compare the case analysis and the Pearson test based on case coding and acquire the following four findings:First,Chinese and American policy entrepreneurs act in different fields.Chinese policy entrepreneurs usually exert influence in the administrative process(government)and eventually form government regulations,while American policy entrepreneurs often exert their influence in the political process(congress)and finally recognize policies as laws.In recent years,Chinese policy entrepreneurs also increasingly influence policies through legal procedures.Second,they get involved in different policy areas and have different ways to propose issues.Chinese policy entrepreneurs prefer livelihood and social governance and avoid political sensitivity,while American policy entrepreneurs get involved in diverse policy areas and their values follow the overall social ideas to be recognized by more stakeholders.Third,they have different professional levels.Chinese policy entrepreneurs focus on the value orientation of public policy but pay less attention to the operability of scheme,while American policy entrepreneurs tend to make systematic and detailed scheme design for specific policy issues and solve problems of technical details.Fourth,there are differences in the tendency of policy entrepreneurs to form alliances between China and the United States.Alliance building is the most important behavioral strategy for policy entrepreneurs in China and the United States throughout the policy process,but policy entrepreneurs in China pay more attention to the support of central and local key decision makers and leaders within the system.The differences between Chinese and American policy entrepreneurs in their influence on public policies reflect the differences between the two countries in policy models and development levels of policy entrepreneurs.The United States has more mature public policies due to their longer development history so that American policy entrepreneurs are more widely engaged in public policies and influence them through more institutionalized and inclusive channels at a higher professional level in policy scheme.At present,the Chinese government promotes governance modernization rapidly,and public policies are gradually moving towards the more open and inclusive decision model.In this change,the group of policy entrepreneurs rise,but overall,there are still limited policy areas for Chinese policy entrepreneurs,so the professional and inclusive levels that influence public policies need to be improved.