The Applicability Of Public Opinion Polls To Pubic Policy Process

With the construction of the socialist harmonious society, the Communist Partyof China and the government have paid more attention to the important role of publicopinion polls in constructing public policy. There is some news about “the mass makean appraisal of government agencies”,“public satisfaction of some policy is high”.But there are also some criticisms of public opinion polls, such as some polls justlygo through the motions, and the government doesn’t really respect public opinion.In government and academic circles，there is not a unified understanding of howto use public opinion polls scientifically and rationally. There are not a series ofsolutions to tell decision makers what is the most suitable condition for using polls.The academic research on this question is also far from enough.To answer this question, this article uses literature research and case analysismethods, discusses the relationship between pubic opinion polls and public policy.This paper analyzes several aspects of public policy which polls can improvementand should be limited on, analyzes the policy process and issues that polls should beused for improvement and not suitable to be used.This paper has three innovations. Firstly, the angle of this research is from policyevaluation standard. From this perspective, the paper analyzes the positive functionand limitation of public opinion polls. Most of previous researches are from theperspectives of political science. This paper selects policy science perspective andputs forward an argument that polls can improvement public policy’s degree ofaccording with public opinion; can improvement policy’s degree of fairness andresponsiveness. But public opinion polls cannot improvement policy’s degree oftechnical feasibility and efficiency; polls also cannot make policy meet legalrequirements.Secondly, in public policy process, this paper puts forward an argument that fourpolicy stages (policy problem definition, policy agenda-setting, policy planning,policy evaluation and adjustment) which are suitable to use public opinion polls and two policy stages (policy adoption and policy implementation) which are not suitable.Some previous researches put forward that polls are suitable for all stages of policyprocess; some researches put forward that polls are only suitable for policy evaluationstage.Thirdly, taking into account policy issues’ characteristic, this paper puts forwardan argument that policy issues’ characteristics can be analyzed into two levels: policydomain and organizational degree of policy stock-holders. The policy domains whichare related to public interests directly and the public have some understandings aresuitable for using public opinion polls. And the policy stock-holders must be notorganizational. When the public do not understand some policy or stock-holders arewell-organized, it is not suitable for using polls.On the basis of above study, this paper analyzes present situations of Chinesegovernment using public opinion polls. The government has mainly used polls inpolicy evaluation stage, in the work of government appraisal and satisfactionevaluation, and in policy domains of regional economic development. The problemsof using polls include: too little polls be used in the stages before policy decision;composite polls and polls on people’s livelihood policy domain are both too little; andindividual local government has existed fake polls. The causes of these problemsinclude: the lack of understanding that polls can improve some policy stages andissues; the lack of putting public opinion as the center of political achievement view.This paper also puts forward three levels suggestions. Firstly, the governmentshould recognize the dual roles of public opinion polls for improving policy, openpolls results of government assessment and officials’ selection, and enhance thetransparency of public policy. Secondly, the government should use much more pollsin the stages before policy decision, use “Importance-Performance Analysis” pollsmodel in the composite polls, and must use polls and/or other ways in the domains ofrelating to public interests directly. Thirdly, the government should selectindependent polls agencies, and establish long-term database of polls results.