Construction Of Deliberative Mechanism In China’s Local Public Decision-Making

In recent years,the deliberative activities in China’s local public decision-making have received extensive attention from the theoretical and practical circles.What is the operating mechanism of deliberative activities in the decision-making process,that is,how does deliberation affect decision-making results?This is an important theoretical and practical issue concerning local public decision-making in China.This is also the main question that this study tries to answer.The basic idea of this study is to sort out the concept and system construction of the deliberative mechanism,and combine with Xiamen’s waste classification legislative decision-making case,to describe how the operating mechanism of public decisionmaking deliberation reached consensus and formed decisions from three levels of plan,principle and clause.The focus of research is to describe the mechanism of local public decision-making deliberative activities in China.Inspired by Christiano’s division of strong and weak consensus,this study believes that the decision consensus should be discussed at three levels:on the level of decision plan it is necessary to reach agreement on which way（policy tool）to solve a certain problem（decision goal）;on the level of decision principles it is necessary to agree on the principles that guide the direction of decision clauses;on the level of decision clauses need it is necessary to reach agreement on operational plans and textual details.According to these three levels,a theoretical framework for explaining the operation of the deliberative mechanism can be constructed,and each level of the deliberative mechanism exhibits different characteristics.After that,the research hypotheses were deduced based on the constructed theory,and some speculations were put forward based on the case of Xiamen waste sorting legislation.Finally,based on in-depth analysis of the case,empirical materials related to the speculation were collected to determine whether they were accurate,and the theory was verified.The study found that the decision-making department provided a formal deliberative scenario for exchanging policy argumentation,thus receiving ideas from non-decision-making actors.The decision-making consensus at all three levels was determined by the tension between power and public rationality,of which power is still strong.On the level of decision-making plans,local goals actively respond to central government’s policies,and local needs will also promote the setting of decision-making goals.At the same time,local governments are committed to choosing the right policy tools,but they need the support of other actors.On the level of decision principles decision-making departments and non-decision-making actors deliberate to establish those principles,but the former have greater influence.On the level of decision-making clauses,non-decision-making departments provide a large number of opinions to supplement and enrich decision-making clauses based on personal experience.The decision-making departments decide the opinions that should be absorbed and forms the final clauses.On the other hand,the evaluation of Xiamen’s administrative legislative decisionmaking deliberative mechanism with the AHP-Fuzzy Comprehensive Evaluation method received a "good" overall result.With the causal mechanism research,we can summarize the characteristics of China’s local public decision-making deliberative mechanism:it has standardized but flexible decision-making procedures and a complete network of actors,which can convert differences into resources,achieve equilibrium based on consensus,and balance efficiency and fairness in the results.The way to improve the deliberative mechanism is to change the ideas of public decision-making and ensure that the channels for deliberation are unblocked;improve the relevant decision-making systems and strictly follow the decision-making process;unite the consensus of all parties in the society and establish a mutual trust relationship.The main innovation of this study is to construct a theoretical framework to explain the deliberative mechanism in local public decision-making in China.Through deep description of specific cases and obtaining relevant information to test theoretical hypotheses,this theoretical construction has been revised and improved.The framework starts from three levels of planning,principles,and clauses of decisionmaking to understand how the main participants in public decision-making act to play their roles and form consensus at different levels of decision-making,and then produce decision-making results.A single case study is helpful for an in-depth analysis of reallife events,but the conclusions drawn from it need more samples to support.In order to obtain more general research conclusions,it is necessary to compare with similar phenomena under different social conditions.These need further research and thinking.