Research On Governance Of Public Crisis Under View Of Policy Capacity

The research in this thesis serves as a response to the two trends in public management at present. On the one hand, the advent of risk society has brought fundamental transformation to the dynamic logic of the current society development and the frequent public crisis has led to the equal importance for the government in coping with the crisis and pushing forward the wealth growth. On the other, the decrease of the government capability, especially the policy capability, under the impact of the new public management movement has caused common anxiety of leaders from many countries. The research on policy capability is started amid the reflection of the new public management movement in the academic circle, and the advent of risk society has made the reconstruction of policy capability more urgent. In today’s world, if any government cannot face and cope with the "in crisis" living context, it means its foundation of legitimacy has been eroded. China, in the process of modernization transformation, has entered the high risk society and the public governance and the public policy have become the key factors in understanding and governing the public crisis.Policy capability is a kind of capability of making wise and collective choices that live up to the public purpose via the allocation of resources so as to integrate and increase the social benefits. It is especially embodied in the capability of making choices that can change the current situation and adjust greater deviation as well as choices with more strategic importance to realize the publicity of public policy, which are the fundamental value embodiment of public policy. Based on the understanding of the meaning of developing public crisis and the construction of overall framework of public crisis management on the basis of the nature defining, this thesis starts from the three correlative levels and processes, namely social risk management in the period of social transformation, the emergency management in sudden events, and the fundamental control of in-depth crisis targeting the risk society, and investigates the deficiency of policy capability in these processes and seeks for routes for reconstruction of policy capability. Chapter II Multi-angle theoretical perspective of public crisis normalizationThe overview from the four theoretical perspectives including social transformation, globalization, new media and risk society provides a relatively complete background statement for exploring the routes of social risk and public crisis governance, and presents the mechanism of action and consequences of the fact of public crisis normalization. The essence of public crisis is a kind of legitimacy pressure. The developed countries are currently facing the post-industrial transformation while the developing countries must manage the accommodation relationship between the modernization process and the social stability. The main source of China’s social risk and frequent crisis is mainly originated from the compressive complex social transformation. The globalization has posed challenges to the cross-border public crisis, the government authoritativeness and management capability. While the new media has changed the crisis patterns and released the human’s desire for interactive social participation and expression, which has given rise to the new social structure and social character, and has changed people’s perception of risk and crisis and boosted the "public opinion explosion". The risk society theory has rendered a more in-depth reflection of the devastating damage that modern technological development brings to our living environment, and the reconstruction of the existing institution, policy and value. The interaction of these forces has further aggravated the uncertainty in the process of China’s social transformation. As a whole, the marked features of China’s "compressive modernization" have become the determinant factors that make China locate in the period that the time races with the risk and also make China’s wealth distribution logic play a leading role, which is the overall judgment for China’s social risk and public crisis.Chapter III Public crisis and government responsibilityCrisis and responsibility are the two sides of a coin that the crisis intrinsically requires that the responsibility be taken, while the improper performance of government responsibility also induces crisis. The core of government responsibility has gone through the historical transition from political responsibility and economic responsibility to social responsibility. And political responsibility, economic responsibility, social responsibility, institutional responsibility as well as the ecological responsibility are the most important ones in the current government responsibility of China. However, the existence of the "pan-economization" in the content of the government responsibility and the "pan-politicalization" in the implementation mechanism of the government responsibility are hidden with the social risks of public crisis. The responsibility structure imbalance, capability deficiency and the imbalance of implementation mechanism in China are the institutional origin of the continuous accumulation of social risks and the frequent occurrence of public crisis in the social transformation period. No matter the adjustment of the relation between the country and the society or the reasonable demarcation between the central and local authorities, or the reformation and improvement of the system for officials’assessment and promotion needs the help of the formulation and adjustment of public policy. Public policy serves as the basic manifestation of government actions and the reconstruction of policy capability as the basic way to manage public crisis.Chapter IV Public crisis and policy capabilityPublic crisis is closely tied up with public policy. Public policy is the major way to the management of public crisis; in return, public crisis is the important trigger mechanism to public policy. Coping with public crisis is the remarkable feature of modern public policy, but there is distinct difficulty in policy response in public crisis. Thus, only rebuilding public governance concept and promoting the public policy capability are the initiative strategy to cope with public crisis. Policy capability, the capability that the government makes the collective choice living up to public purpose by resource allocation, aims at adapting to the trend of the development of the times, continuously enhancing all the people’s dignity and well-being, and improving the capability of international competition and cooperation, which includes the interest coordination of the policy, increment selectivity, strategic choice and crisis management. In terms of the governing capability, it is the significant medium between state capacity and administrative capacity, while policy capability is the center of the governance capability. The management of public crisis needs to proceed in risk governance, emergency governance and crisis governance on the basis of constructing its entire governance framework, and the analysis on the policy capability deficiency in these three aspects is the basis of policy capability building in public crisis management.Chapter V Policy capability reconstruction in public crisis governanceThe policy capability reconstruction of public crisis governance is mainly intrinsically managed in linked manner from the following three aspects. Firstly, initiatively coping with the social risks in the social transformation period is the fundamental way of public crisis governance, which is a management strategy initiatively accepting risks. The policy capability reconstruction places particular emphasis on optimizing the macro layer of the system building, and requires further reforming the system for officials’performance evaluation, building responsible governments, strengthening legal construction, building limited government, and adjusting the relationship between the state and the society, optimizing the national capability, constructing transformation strategy policy platform, adopting social common service system and strategy, enhancing democracy and scientificalness of policy making, and paying attention to risk evaluation of social stability. Secondly, the policy capability building in emergency management should be enhanced, which is a passive but practical risk management strategy. The national emergency education policy should be practiced to promote the whole resilience of the society, to complete the emergency management system of China, to enhance systematic effectiveness, to realize quick response and meaning construction, to reduce social consequences, to push forward policy learning and transformation, and to promote policy optimization. Thirdly, as modernity has uncertainty itself, the modernization transformation of China is also a challenging path filled with uncertainties. For coping with the huge governance challenge brought by the risk society and getting rid of the common crisis the human society faces, the policy environment under the influence thereof should be cognized again, and policy ethics and values under the risk society should be rebuilt, so as to promote democracy and scientificalness of policy making, to construct the public policy mode composed by cooperation, responsibility and prospect, and to carry out the transformation such as public policy evaluation featuring the combination of facts and values, etc.