Research On China's Diplomatic Decision-making Mechanism

Intensive study of China's diplomatic decision-making regime is a key to understand China's foreign policy and behavior motives.Under the background of China's rapid rise and all-round integration into the international society,the question how to formulate the diplomatic strategy conforming to the development trend of the era has caused the wide attention both at home and abroad.From the perspective of the evolution of New China's foreign policy,the formation and construction of China's diplomatic dec is ion-making mechanism have been influenced by the internal and external environment and the ideas and the cognition.Also,with the evolution of the times,the China's diplomatic institutional framework,decision model and identity positioning have been constantly enriched and perfected and then formed a decision regime rich in Chinese own characteristics.Through the in-depth analysis of the inner mechanism of China's diplomatic decision-making regime,this study summarizes the successful experiences of the New China's foreign policy-making systematically and explores the advantages and disadvantages of China's diplomatic decision-making mechanism from the angle of the theory in order to effectively integrate all kinds of the domestic political resources,further to promote the development and perfecting of China's diplomatic decision-making mechanism and cope with the complicated international political challenges,thus to safeguard the national interests more effectively.On the basis of reference to the existing research achievement,using both the politics and history research approaches and combining the macro and micro perspective,this study does a systematic and comprehensive research on China's diplomatic decision-making mechanism and chooses the typical diplomatic decision-making cases in Sino-US relations to test the argument.mainly based on the combination of the international politics and the domestic politics,on the one hand,this study analyzes the structural impacts and restrictions of the international political factors to China's diplomatic decision-making;On the other hand,this study reveals the inner links between the domestic political environment,the institutional framework,foreign policy ideas and China's diplomatic decision-making.On this basis,the study develops an analytical framework to explore the main features and operation mode of China's diplomatic decision-making mechanism.This dissertation consists of the introduction,the body of six chapters and the conclusion.The first chapter systematically presents the overall research status of the foreign policy analysis.This chapter cards the theoretical history,main contributions,problems,development trends of the foreign policy analysis.As an important part of foreign policy analysis,the theories and models put forward by the foreign policy analysis lay a solid foundation for China's diplomatic decision-making mechanism research.The second chapter develops an analysis framework through conbinations of the three factors:the decision-making environment,institutional framework,cognitive idea.Focusing on analyzing the ways of the political interaction both at home and abroad to affect the diplomatic decision-making,this chapter concretely interprets the relationship between the international environment and domestic environment as well as power structure and diplomatic decision-making.At the same time,this chapter also pays attention to the role of non-material factors such as ideas.In all,the diplomatic decision-making mechanism analysis framework explains the internal relevance existing in domestic politics and diplomatic decision-making.The third chapter comprehensively analyzes China's diplomatic decision-making institutional framework and operation mechanism.After reviewing Chinese diplomatic decision-making organization evolution,the chaper analyzes the hub function of the central committee of the communist party of China foreign affairs in China's diplomatic decision-making mechanism systematically.The Centralization and unification is the basic characteristics of China's diplomatic decision-making organizational structure with the diplomatic decision-making power belonging to the minority high-level decision makers.However,with the deepening of the reform and opening up,more and more departments and organizations are involved in the diplomatic decision-making,and China's diplomatic decision-making is given with democratization colour and becomes more plural and diversified gradually.Nowadays,the China's diplomatic decision-making is under the centralized and unified leadership of the CPC central committee with the party,the government,the army,the people involved in different level as it's basic organizaitonal models.The fourth chapter explains how the potential impact of the ideas on China's diplomatic decision-making.Around the changes of the era view,the view of interests,the identity concept of China's policy makers,this chapter makes an in-depth interpretation how the ideas transform with the evolution of the situation at home and abroad,and dominate and shaping China's foreign strategy in order to seek the deep motivation of China's diplomatic dec is ion-making.There is a close relationship between the concept of cognitive and diplomatic action in in China's decision-making leve,which contains the diplomatic tradition,history and ideological value judgment.Therefore,they play the role of the action guide and decision-making criteria in China's foreign decision making.The fifth chapter summarizes and generalizes the operation pattern and the main characteristics of the Chinese diplomatic decision-making mechanism.In long-term diplomatic practice,China's diplomatic decision-making mechanism has formed a model with a top decision makers as the core----concentric circles,wich has four distinctive features--------"party leadership","elite decision-making model","consensus decision type","gradual debug decision type".China's diplomatic decision-making mechanism has the continuity and variability,democratization and decentralization,diversity and diversification,specialization and institutionalization.However,at the same time it should also strengthen coordination,promote strategic anticipation power,reform the foreign power configuration,etc.,to reform the unreasonable part of the system and mechanism as much as possible.The main innovation of this study embodies in:this study develops an analysis framework through conbinations of the three factors:the decision-making environment,institutional framework,cognitive idea.This framework breaks through a confined to single research paradigm of diplomatic decision-making model or organization mechanism in the study of the diplomatic decision-making mechanism.China's diplomatic decision-making mechanism is regarded as a matter of entities,both also covers the behavior patterns,political cognitive thinking and concept of the political system,and to carry out comprehensive research.this study Summarizes and sums up a "concentric circles”model This model manifests that the Chinese diplomatic decision-making mechanism initially formed a diversified stucture with the party,the government,the army,the people involved in different level around the core decision-making,in which who are more infinite close to the decision-making core,who have the greater the influence on the diplomatic decision-making.This study further analyzes the operation mechanism of the CCPC foreign affairs which has many functions such as decision making,coordination,consultation.As the hub of China's diplomatic decision-making organization,it plays an important role in the decision making process.By using the cognitive theory to interpretate the relationship between the foreign ideas and China's diplomatic decision-making.The era view,values and identity of China's policy makers become the influence medium between the change of external environment and policy actions.The changes of the environment outside are reflected through the concept of cognition of the policymakers and then promote the formation of a specific foreign policy,which fully shows that the concept of cognition influence the result of the policy in some way.