The Action Logic Of Interest Groups In The Process Of Public Policy In Contemporary China

With the deep development of China's Reform and Opening Up, interest groups have already greatly affected China's public policies. This study aims to answer the main question of the logic of interest groups'action in the process of public policy-making in Contemporary China. It includes the following four related sub-questions:what are the original reasons and current situations of interest groups in contemporary China? What are the motives of interests groups to get involved in public policy making process? What are the resources and tactics interest groups take to affect public policy? How does the interest groups'action influence the model of public policy-making? The dissertation, with theories of policy process and policy network, forms the analysis framework from four aspects, namely platform, actors, process and outcomes. It emphasizes on why, by what and how, that is motives, resources and tactics, interest groups influence the action process of public policy.The political institutions structure and policy-making system of China constitute t the platform where interest groups affect the public policy. The dissertation generalizes the institutionalized structure of China's public policy-making as the model of "Three as One, Party as Core". As more and more interest groups participate in the process of policy-making, the former Model of Single-actor Policy-making Circle monopolized by the bureaucracy starts to transform into the Model of Compound-actor Policy-making Circle, in which the bureaucracy is the core while interest groups are the participants. So the influence of interest group on public policy gradually becomes evident.The dissertation defines interest group as the organizational group which takes collective actions in order to realize and guarantee specific objectives and common interests. The interest group takes on three features:common interests and objectives, organizational structure and collective action. Typical theories on the formation of interest group contain Truman's "disorder theory", "proliferation theory" and "equilibrium theory"; Olson's "collective action theory"; and Salisbury's "exchange theory". The dissertation summarizes the formation of China's interest group as the "Socially Endogenetic Model" which follows the developing mechanism of social structure change—iterest differentiation—interest organizing—interest group generating. In criteria of the organizational degree and pursued interest objectives, the dissertation divides the interest groups in China into four kinds as Entrepreneurial Interest Group, Associational Interest Group, Institutionalized Interest Group and Mass Interest Group.Action of interest group derives from the recognition of group interests. Most interest groups take action to affect public policy in pursuit of material interests while some mass interest groups in pursuit of value interest. The paper analyzes the interest-driven path interest groups in the four fields of interest recognition, interest stimulation, interest permeation and interest contest. The interest motivation paves logical basis for interest group's involvement in the process of policy-making. The paper analyzes the motives of interest groups'involvement in public policy from the case studies of policies of "Unifying the Two Sets of Enterprise Income Tax" and "Air Conditionings Energy Saving at 26 Centigrade".There must be a certain resource network structure for interest groups to exert effect on public policy. The power and structure of resource endowment will directly affect the tactics choices of interest groups'behavior. The resources of interest groups include economic, political, organizational, informational and relational resources, which make a certain structural sequence and resource basis for behavior choices of interest group. Ordinarily speaking, stronger resource endowment and a more comprehensive structural network lead to advantages for interest groups in the process of policy bargaining, which provides effective space for behavior tactics and makes a stronger action ability. The dissertation analyzes the case of the interest group's bargaining in the policy-making of Law of the PRC on Employment Contracts. By comparison of All-China Federation of Trade Unions and foreign companies, we find that the former has more tactical choices in the legislation bargaining resulting from advantages of member size, organizational structure, political resources and media resources and so on. Therefore, the Law of the PRC on Employment Contracts is more favorable to the claim and interests of All-China Federation of Trade Unions. Resources endowment and resource networking structure difference of the two results into their strong or weak efficiency of subsequent action.Action tactics of interest group are their ways to affect public policy with capital. The tactics not only depend on the degree of interest relation between interest groups and certain policy, but also depend on their resource networking structure. Tactics of China's interest groups affecting public policies mainly are pluralistic interest expressing, lobbying, cooperative allying, capturing of bureaucrat, forming public opinion and so on. Firstly, pluralistic interest expressing channels include institutional quasi-institutional and non-institutional ones Institutional interest expression mainly consists of People's Congress Conference, Political Consultative Conference and Democratic Party's Consultative Conference; quasi-institutional expressing channels mainly are professional associations, mass media and the Appeals Systems, etc. Non-institutional channels are informal personal contact, bribery, letters by way of personal relations, propaganda by bought intellectuals and press conference and other methods. Secondly, lobbying is to get contact with political authority and decision core by such interest agents as professionals and scholars or by means of such pressing actions as writing letters and publicizing letters and so on. Thirdly, interest groups also form interactive, cooperative alliance in the process of public policy in order to strengthen the bargaining capacity. Fourthly, interest groups capture bureaucrats to build interest alliance with bureaucratic elites. Fifthly, they buy into intellectual elites and mass media to mould public opinion. The dissertation takes the example of real estate regulation policy. It analyzes how the real estate interest groups realize maximum interests by combination of the above tactics. According to the analysis of the bargaining process of real estate regulation of "121 Document" and "Number 18 Regulation", it finds out that real estate interest groups use a combination of three-dimensional action tactics to hold the regulation policies, and alleviate the policy effectiveness. Such combined tactics include building interest community and interactive alliance, making use of pluralistic resource advantage to lobby the policy central circle, expressing interests by pluralistic means, and forming public opinions. Different interest groups will choose one kind of above tactics or a certain combination in specific policy-making process in order to exert effective effects on policies.To sum up, interest groups in China result from the economic, social and political development, which means they are socially endogenetic outcomes. It is necessary to positively build favorable conditions of social context, political environment, economic structure and cultural psychology for the balance and effectiveness of interest group's development in China. Secondly, interest groups in China have permeated into the policy process and affected the results of public policies Interest motivation, resource predomination and tactics combination build the action logic of interest groups in the policy-making process, which is "Interest-Resource shape Behavior". Thirdly, by analyzing the process how interest groups affects the public policies, the dissertation generalizes the public policy model in China one transforming from Model of Single-actor Policy-making Circle monopolized by the bureaucracy to Model of Compound-actor Policy-making Circle characteristic of bureaucracy as core and interest groups as participant. But this new policy-making model is still in change and growth for the reasons of political institutions, social situations, citizen moods and interest groups itself. Therefore, the future of this new model depends upon the practice. Finally, the dissertation defines the analysis on the interest groups'involvement and affecting process of policy-making as "Policy Science of Interest Group", whose elementary framework consists of institution, interest, actor, process and outcome analysis.