Research On The Regulatory Policy Change Of Taxi Industry In China From The Perspective Of Historical Institutionalism

Regulatory policy is a bridge between government and market,and it is an important tool and means for government to carry out industry govemance.To probe into the change process of regulatory policy can present the development trend of policy field,discover the characteristics of the evolution of policy elements,and understand the delineation mechanism of government,market and social boundaries.The theory of historical institutionalism attaches great importance to historical factors,emphasizes asymmetric institutional structure relations in the policy field,recognizes the initiative of actors,and highly agrees with the usefulness and unique role of ideas in solving uncertainties.Therefore,it is an important window to explain the process and mechanism of regulatory policy change.Taxi industry is one of the earliest industries in China's market-oriented reform.It has not only experienced a booming period of rapid growth,but also undergone a blocking period of stable scale.Under the background of technology innovation,taxi industry also encounters the challenge of online car-hailing.Therefore,the development process of taxi industry regulatory policy contains two aspects of stability and change and it is a microcosm of China's regulatory policy change after the reform and opening up with typicalness and representativeness.By reviewing the change of the taxi industry's regulatory policy in the past 40 years,we can explore the relationship among government,market and society,and have an insight to the motive force and development trend in specific industry field since the reform and opening up.It has theoretical significance for enriching and developing the theory of historical institutionalism and for expanding and deepening the research on the regulatory policy change.In addition it also has realistic significance for promoting the innovation of regulatory policy,and for improving the effect and efficiency of government regulation in taxi industry.This study takes the taxi industry regulatory policy change process as an example from 1978 to 2008,and uses literature research methods to analyze a large number of domestic and foreign data;applys the key node theory of historical institutionalism to divide the stages of taxi industry regulatory policy change;expounds the change mode of taxi industry regulatory policy by the aid of comparative analysis method;interprets the driving force of taxi industry regulatory policy change with the help of deductive reasoning and inductive analysis;clarifies the path,mechanism and current situation of taxi industry regulatory policy change based on the path dependence theory of historical institutionalism;finally,the conclusion of this study is put forward.Concretely,this study is carried out from the following aspects:This study first clarifies the background,significance,methods and ideas of the topic,reviews and combs the domestic and foreign research results related to the taxi industry regulatory policy changes,and clarifies the core concepts of the study.Then,taking the theory of historical institutionalism as the theoretical basis of the study and starting from the three dimensions of institution,history and actors,the theoretical framework is constructed for the analysis of taxi industry regulatory policy change,according to the problem analysis logic and the practice and text of taxi industry regulatory policy implementation.The analysis framework points out that the institution is the premise of the change of taxi industry regulatory policy,shaping the preferences and action strategies of the actors;history reflects the form and process of regulatory policy change in the taxi industry,and show the stage scenes of actors'activities;actors are the fundamental driving force to promote the change of regulatory policies and they explore the "contradiction potential" from the old institution by exerting their initiative in order to change the existing structural relationship in the policy field.Under the influence of path dependence mechanism,the above three aspects interact with each other,and the development of taxi industry regulatory policy appears a different change path and trend from the past.Based on this,the follow-up content mainly tries to answer the four core questions related to the research of taxi industry regulatory policy change,and they are "what kind of institutional background does the regulatory policy change have","when does it change","how does it change" and "why does it change'.Firstly,under the grand background of the social transformation,the inter-governmental relationship of the strong central government and the weak local government shapes the local government's "strategic" behavior mode,forms a flexible industry regulation mode,and also causes the frequent transfer of the regulation authority center.Under the condition of market economy,the relationship between the government and the market-the unit system has been catabolized,which has resulted in three different operation modes of the taxi industry.These two institutional forms make the subject of regulatory policy prefer to regard the organization(enterprise)as the object of regulation,the object of regulatory policy generally agrees with the existing structural relationship,the value objectives of regulatory policies are gradually diversified.the subsystems of regulatory policies are increasingly closed,the evaluation system of regulatory policies is incomplete,and the regulatory power is involved.Secondly,the taxi industry has three key nodes,one is the implementation of market-oriented reform.the other is the establishment of franchising system,and the third is the legalization of online car hailing.Accordingly,the evolution of taxi industry regulatory policy can be divided into three stages:the emergence and development of regulatory policy,the stabilization and solidification of regulatory policy,and the breakthrough innovation of regulatory policy.Thirdly.through investigating the text and practice of taxi industry regulatory policy.it is found that the annual average number of taxi industry policy is increasing,the objectives of regulation policy are gradually overlapping,the application of regulatory policy tools has developed from regulatory mode to composite mode,and the authority center of regulatory policy has shifted frequently.Through diachronic comparative analysis,it is found that the first key node and the third key node of taxi industry regulatory policy are paradigm policy changes,and second key node are general policy changes.Through synchronic comparative analysis,it is found that the change of taxi industry regulatory policy in China emerges an inverted U-shaped pattern.From the perspective of policy network,the taxi industry policy network has changed significantly in power structure,interest relationship and communication mechanism.Fourthly,a dynamic model of taxi industry regulatory policy change is proposed at first which considers that concepts,interests and information technology influence and restrict the development of actors'action strategies.Then from the path dependence theory,the path,the mechanism and current situation of taxi industry regulatory policy change are analysed.This research mainly carries out innovative exploration in the following four aspects:in the first place,it constructs the institutionl-history-actor theoretical analysis framework of taxi industry regulatory policy change;in the second place,it revises and improves the key node theory and path dependence theory of historical institutionalism;in the third place,it points out the mode of taxi industry regulatory policy change;in the forth place,it puts forward the viewpoint that the change path of taxi industry regulatory policy turns to the upward and downward integration path.In spite of this paper focuses on the taxi industry regulatory policy.it can "see the big from the small" to peep into the mode,motive force and path of regulatory policy change,since the reform and opening up,especially under the background of the increasingly updated information technology and the rapid rise of new interest organizations,providing some theoretical support and practical thinking for the realization of better regulatory policy changes.