Citizen Participation In Formulation Of Public Policies: Quantification, Performance And Approach

Research on citizen participation in formulation of public policies is significant in the course of political democratization. In recent years, the course of political democratization has quickened gradually. Although some quite excellent research achievements obtained by use of normative research methods have been published successively in China, the research on this problem becomes slow and difficult to further develop at present from the point of view of research trend. It is mainly manifested as follows: first, more and more researchers borrow ideas from each other, so there are few innovative viewpoints and theories. New viewpoints always derive from innovation and development of research methods. Many researchers use others' ideas for reference, so this shows that puzzlement on research methods exists during discussion of this problem. Second, in those research achievements, each researcher thinks they are right themselves. As the old saying goes, there are two sides to every question. This has something to do with the phenomenon of more qualitative conclusions and fewer quantitative conclusions. Third, there are more macroscopic descriptions but fewer microscopic analyses, largely because there are fewer methods of microscopic analyses, especially the quantitative analysis.In the practice of public policies, quantitative assessment can be carried out through establishment of scientific and true quantitative indices on motive, degree, approach, method and performance of citizen participation in formulation of public policies. On the basis of this understanding, in order to enhance the scientific and normative natures and reliability of research on the problem of citizen participation in formulation of public policies, this paper chooses instead to discuss the problem of citizen participation in formulation of public policies of Chinese local governments in terms of quantification, starting with innovation of research methods. The objective is to abstract mathematical models exactly reflecting rules of policies from numerous and complicated phenomena of public policies, and obtain a correct conclusion derived from mathematical methods through further research of mathematical models which hasn't been mentioned in other researches and can be inspected by practice. This is beneficial to drive further development of research on this problem as well as provide some reference for innovation of research methods of political science. Because empirical study is a good research method to solve practical problems, the research in this paper is based on field investigation, questionnaire and literature search. The field investigation covers 6 provinces, cities and autonomous regions. The findings of 5000 pieces of questionnaire are from 31 provinces, cities and autonomous regions except Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan. Case analysis is a special form of empirical study. Accordingly, case analysis is used as applicable in the research of this paper. Problems in four modules are discussed as below by use of abovementioned research methods.The first module is the research on theoretical background, practical background and function of citizen participation in formulation of public policies. The popular sovereignty, public choice theory, governance theory and other relevant theories constitute the theoretical background to scaling up citizen participation in formulation of public policies orderly. In recent years, reform of governmental functions has developed practical space of citizen participation in formulation of public policies; economic globalization has provided new organizational basis for citizen participation in formulation of public policies; citizens have become more aware of their rights of participation in formulation of public policies due to market-oriented economy; advancement of educational status has had an impact on attention of citizen on formulation of public policies and ability of participation in formulation of public policies; development of information technology has offered convenient and interactive conditions for citizen participation in formulation of public policies. Citizen participation has a function of nonlinearity. The function is mainly reflected in the process of facilitating scientific formulation of public policies, improving valid public policies and boosting citizens' supervision. As the function of citizen participation is nonlinear, so citizen participation is helpful under certain conditions, and it will be useless or harmful in case of exceeding the certain conditions.The second module is the cognition of citizen on participation in formulation of public policies. Through constructing a mathematical model of citizens' attention on participation in formulation of public policies, it will clearly show the influence of such variables as age, sex, educational background, annual income, etc on attention in a sense of quantification. For instance, the change of attention with age takes on projecting motion; slight positive correlation exists between annual income and attention; once the a hierarchy of educational background is enhanced, citizens' attention on participation in formulation of public policies will increase by about 5.42 percent compared with the group with the adjacent lower degree, etc. By setting "value index of favoring public polices", difference of citizens' participation motives with different identities may be described exactly. For example, the educational background is positively correlated to the "value index of favoring public polices" of citizens' participation motives, which means higher educational background will result in higher "value index of favoring public polices". Once a hierarchy of educational background is enhanced, "value index of favoring public polices" increases by about 6.36 percent averagely. Participation motive and intervention of political systems are directly related. If the participation motive is much intervened by political systems, citizens will be more active to participate in formulation of public policies, etc.The third module is the research on macroscopic morphology of citizen participation in formulation of public policies. The participation index of our citizens in formulation of public policies is 34.15 percent, which means that our citizen participation in formulation of public policies is quite insufficient. From the preference of citizens' policy function structure, the participation of benefit type and responsibility type shall be leading in scaling up citizen participation in formulation of public policies orderly. The quadratic curve relation between the number of citizens participating and frequency of citizens participating indicates that the change of frequency of citizens participating has an impact of nonidentity on the number of citizens participating. There is an apparent phenomenon of scissors difference between citizens' attention on public policies and their participation. It is manifested as follows: As to policies of the Central Government and the province, their attention is high, but participation is low; as to policies of the county and township, their attention is low, but participation is high; during scaling up citizen participation in formulation of public policies orderly, we shall make a difference between policies of governments at different levels, that is to say, active citizen participation in formulation of policies of the Central Government and the province shall be encouraged, citizens' attention on policies of the county and township shall be improved greatly.The fourth module is the research on microscopic morphology of citizen participation in formulation of public policies. The method of citizen participation in formulation of public policies shall be distinguished from the approach. Participation method belongs to an endogenic behavior choice rather than an extraneous system designing. However, participation approach belongs to an extraneous system designing rather than an endogenic behavior choice. As to participation methods, citizens prefer to participate in formulation of public policies through independent direct actions. With regard to participation approaches, there is a linear relation as well as a nonlinear relation between educational attainments and preference of participation approaches. In this paper, such four indices as participation rate, inefficiency, obvious effective rate and effective rate established may reflect the performance of citizen participation in formulation of public policies approximately. From the "performance symmetry index of citizen participation" established in this paper, it is clearly shown that the performance symmetry index of citizen participation increases by about 5.35 percent once a hierarchy of educational attainments is lowered. The performance symmetry index of citizen groups with low educational attainments is very high, which indicates that they have strong feeling of being deprived concerning participation performance. With respect to those citizen groups with low educational attainments, some active measures shall be taken to eliminate this kind of feeling so that reconciliation and impartiality will be realized in citizen participation in formulation of public policies.