A Positive Interaction Mechanism Among The Officials, Experts And The Public During The Process Of Policy-Making

The choice of main body in policy making has always been the subject of academic attention, and the participatory role of the main body outside the system in policy-making process, such as the public, experts, media etc, becomes the research interests of many scholars. For analysis of policy-making’s main body not only stay in the academic theory of vision temporary, the officials are also promoting the innovations of policy system and establish the policy-making system which is "public participate, specialists demonstrate, government make a strategic decision" to provide protection of the system for public and specialists’policy participation. However, China’s policy practice shows that though various types of institutional regulations for the the main body involved in policy-making process, policy making is still showing a monopoly and unified institutional structure dominated by government officials. Under such policy system and structural framework, whether it’s the specialists with rational knowledge or the public with advantages in the judgement of value preferences are still in the edge and outside of the frame structure essentially. Although the occasional presence in the system, they do not get the "empowerment of the substantive", which leads to the present embarrassment and dilemma of expert advice and public participation in reality. How to reconstruct the relationship between government officials, experts and the public in the policy process and make them create a perfect power allocation structure in the policy-making system is the key question to be thought about and answered by the academics in this case.Under the current policy environment, the trinity of officials, experts and the public policy-making model proposed across the board bring about many problems across the board in reality. The reason is largely because there is no corresponding participation requirements to policy-making actors based on the requirements and characteristics of each policy differences. The public and specialists to participate in policy-making can not only bring a positive role, but it can also have a negative impact, such as time expense, increased economic costs, etc. According to practical investigation of the policy process, it can be seen that not all policy-making processes need to introduce the participation of the public and specialists, while the public does not have interests and intentions to involve in all policies. It’s the status and role in policy-making process, the types of policies and differences of policy processes that determine the specific pattern and power configuration of officials, experts and the public three in the policy-making process. Based on this, this paper presents the analytical framework of policy which is "types-process" to discuss the interactive mode and selection of officials, experts and the public in policy-making process.Based on the differences of the main body’s selection and power’s configuration, different types of policies may have two classification criteria which are "public acceptance" and "professional technical requirements", dividing the policy making into four types:multi-equilibrium mode, value dominated mode, ration dominated mode and autonomous decision-making mode. Value dominated mode pays more attention to public acceptance and emphasizes to obtain and balance the value preferences and the subjective views between different stakeholders in the process, therefore the optimal choice of the main participated body is the officials and the public. For the ration dominated mode poses higher requirements of professional and technical knowledge, political conflict is relatively small and the consensus on values is easy to reach, the optimal choice of the main body is involved in the officials and specialists. Multi-equilibrium mode is more complex in which expert advice and recommendations is an integral, involving a large number of rational knowledge to absorb and apply. A high level of public acceptance is also needed in the process of implementation, related to balance the demands of different stakeholders. It also needs to consider the coordination and balance between the differences of the public’s value references reaching to a multi-interest demands and professional rational knowledge, forming a positive interaction mechanism among the three officials, experts and the public.In different stages of the policy, the power configuration of the main body differences, whereby policy-making process can be divided into three stages:agenda-setting, program planning and program selection. In the agenda setting stage, all the main body can form issues of concern. More concerns and emphasis on the way of the settings within the system facilitate the public and experts to upload their issues timely, and tendentiously concern about the issues raised by the public or experts against different types of policy. Although officials’ agenda is still occupying a major role in our agenda setting, but the role of the expert agenda and public agenda is also increasingly apparent, becoming policy origins that cannot be neglected. In the program planning stage, although the knowledge and experience of government officials is more in line with the requirements of the planning stage, program planning and proposing is not behind closed doors and self-designed. Design plays an important role in the policy process, while public acceptance and professional technical requirements at this stage to achieve are even more critical. In the selection phase of the program, the officials play a leading role, while the participation of the public and the expert does not affect the significance of program content. The public participation is more of a formal sense of legitimacy. However, for highly specialized policy, experts should carry out the feasibility discussion of the policy before the introduction of the policy eventually.All in all, dividing policy into different types is conducive to re-configure the right of the involved main body in policy-making process and remodeling the interaction mechanism. The combination of such classification and different stages of the policy-making process can more fine distinguish between the focus of different policy participant at different stages in different types of policy, which is conducive to decision-makers to develop a integration for policy-making’s dynamic mechanism.