A Study On Public Policy Agenda Setting Of China From A Perspective Of The Deliberative Democracy Theory

Public policy agenda setting is logical beginning of policy process. It has important effect on the whole procedures of policy circulating. Public policy’s fundamental goal is to solve policy problem and realize public interests. Public policy agenda is the "selecting mechanism" of public policy problem, is the "key point" of social problem transforming into policy problem, and is platform of public interests expressed and integrated. The publicity, scientificalness, democratic and legality of public policy agenda setting decide whether policy problem really can do reflect public interests and public value. That directly affects efficiency of policy-making, policy-executing, policy-estimating and policy-terminating, even affects result of the whole public policy circulating. So, being the first procedure of policy circulating, public policy agenda setting has very important position in public policy research.Until today, public policy making, policy executing, and follow procedures always are the focusing points of policy science research since Lasswell constructed the "perspective spectrum" and created the stage model of policy procedure. However, with the deeply research of policy science, the defects of traditional public policy research paradigm which core elements are policy making and policy executing gradually be found by more and more people. The existing policy analysis framework can not to explain some complex phenomenon. The experimentalism public policy constructing process based on the "rational man" hypothesis gradually lose efficiency. Under this background, being the "window of public policy", public policy agenda setting has been focused by more and more policy researcher because it’s choosing policy problem function and distributing public interests function. It has been one of the policy researching hot spots.Justice and equity are the fundamental value in the harmonious socialist society. But for a long time, the public policy agenda setting process showed obvious elitism tendency in China. That means the more public policy problems about public life mainly be introduced and decided by officers and professors invited by government. Public decision makers preliminary are every kinds of elites, economical elites, cultural elites, social elites and so on. The general public usually be out of public decision making gate. However, with the deepen reform of the economic and political system, the social interests gradually differentiate and develop to diversify. The existing policy agenda setting model is facing tremendous challenges.The deliberative democracy theory is a vigorous and newer democratic political theory. The 18th CPC National Congress Report put forward to "perfecting the socialism deliberative democracy". The Third Plenary Session of the eighteen Report put forward to "pushing on the socialism deliberative democracy to extensive, multiple and systemic development". Deliberative democracy emphasizes the right and opportunity are equal among all of people, and their consciousness being independent and should be expressed adequately. It also emphasizes that all of people should participate in public decision making and discussing. Through democratic and self-exanimate process accomplish interests changing, and through equality procedures accomplish legal results. The value of deliberative democracy is in accordance with the value of public policy agenda setting in transnational China. Based on this, the paper combines the western deliberative democracy theory with China socialism deliberative democracy, and using the ideological essence to guide the deepen research of public policy agenda setting in China.First, the paper discusses relationship between the western deliberative democracy and China socialism deliberative democracy, and introduces value of deliberative democracy theory to public policy agenda setting research. Second, in order to find the scientific and suitable analysis instrument, according to the deliberative democracy theory, the author through evaluating several classical analysis frameworks of policy agenda setting constructs a more scientific, whole and reasonable analysis framework of Chinese policy agenda setting research. Rely on the framework, the paper deepen discusses the dynamic systems, constructing elements and deciding processes of China public policy agenda setting, and analyses every part’s defections, then giving some advises. Finally, depending on analysis results, the author considers that constructing "Multi deliberation" Model of public policy agenda setting is the main tendency and the right choice for China.