Construction Rationale And Practical Orientation: Research On Food Safety Government Smart Regulation Mode

Food safety is an important issue of national governance and the basic support of Chinese-style modernization.Since socialism with Chinese characteristics entered a new era,food safety has become a national strategy,integrating multiple meanings of safeguarding people’s livelihood,common prosperity,national health and national security.The whole society has attached unprecedented importance to food safety.Food safety is regarded as the top priority in governing the country and a major test of governance ability,showing the complexity of food safety issues at this stage and the urgency of governance.Correspondingly,seeking an effective food safety regulation theory and regulation mode has always been the internal logic of China’s administrative system reform and mechanism innovation.Of the nine institutional reforms of the State Council since 1982,five of them involved food safety regulation,and the reform efforts have gradually increased.In particular,in the institutional reform in 2018,food safety was included in the scope of comprehensive market regulation.This reform plan is different from international practice,and it does not continue the previous patchy approach.It is considered to be a reconstruction of the original food safety regulation system.However,with the deepening of the reform,relevant issues have aroused concern,reflection and discussion from all walks of life.For example,what are the motivations for the reform and the logic to follow?What is the theoretical support and era basis? How to integrate market regulation and food safety regulation? What is the main thread behind a series of innovative measures in food safety regulation? How to build a regulatory mode that matches the current regulatory system? In short,the questioning of the nature of the phenomenon of food safety regulatory reform reflects the lag and insufficiency of government regulatory theory supply,and the exploration of food safety regulatory modes has become a frontier topic and a practical proposition.As a response to theoretical expectations and practical concerns,this thesis proposes to use "smart regulation" to answer the above questions,and tries to build a food safety government smart regulation mode in the Chinese context.The introduction of the concept of smart regulation is due to the homogeneity comparison and difference analysis of domestic and foreign smart regulation research.Examples are as follows: foreign smart regulation research highlights the regulatory diversity background and regulatory cooperation from a multi-center perspective;smart comes from the flexibility and variety of regulation;the purpose of smart regulation is to balance the conflict between regulation and deregulation.Domestic research on smart regulation highlights regulatory technicism under the background of the information society and the perspective of big data applications,emphasizing that smart comes from data,and the purpose of smart regulation is to improve the efficiency of government regulation.The smart regulation mentioned above presents different smart connotations,but none of them can comprehensively summarize the current status of China’s food safety regulation.Therefore,this thesis focuses on regulatory evolution and government regulatory reform approaches under the background of the era of governance,giving new meaning to smart regulation from a relatively macro perspective,in order to provide a theoretical basis and mode for explaining the logic and practical exploration of China’s current food safety regulatory system reform support,and then enrich the theoretical system of government regulation.First of all,the thesis elaborates the theoretical basis of smart regulation,focusing on answering what is smart regulation,what is the connotation of smart regulation,and how to analyze smart regulation.The purpose is to promote the coordinated development of an efficient market,an effective government and an organic society.As a variable of government regulation,"smart" represents innovative elements and key tensions.Smart can be summarized as a general term for a series of innovative regulatory principles and methods.The focus of research on smart regulation is how to define SMART.From the connotation point of view,smart regulation is the reflection and reconstruction of government regulation value,system,and tool rationality,and it is a systematic improvement and overall upgrade of traditional regulation forms to meet the needs of the changing times.The thesis innovatively puts forward the analytical framework of "space-institution-tool-assessment",which solves the theoretical confusion of the integrated analysis of "collaborativeism" and "technicalism" in regulation,and constitutes a theoretical dialogue with the existing research on smart regulation at home and abroad.It highlights the current prominent theme of food safety regulation.Secondly,the thesis comprehensively demonstrates the historical approach and practical mechanism of the food safety government smart regulation mode,focusing on the logical starting point,driving factors,era foundation and operation mode of the government smart regulation mode.Based on the analytical framework,the thesis redefines the evolution process of China’s food safety government regulation: the stage of extensive regulation(1949-1997),the stage of authoritative regulation(1998-2012)and the stage of smart regulation(since 2013).The transformation of the regulatory mode is closely related to the historical situation and the challenges of the times.The motivation for smart regulation stems from the contradictions and conflicts between the upgrading of food governance and the lack of public perception,the accumulation of food risks and the overload of bureaucratic structures,the evolution of the food market and the shackles of administrative barriers,the alienation of food technology and information.The modernization of national governance,the marketization of resource allocation,the institutionalization of public participation,and the digitization of government regulation are the foundations of the era that support the possibility of smart regulation.Judging from the existing cases,the operation mechanism of the food safety government smart regulation mode can be condensed into four types: social co-governance,regulation sandbox,algorithmic administration and risk management,which respectively represent the innovative elements and smart orientation of the government in the construction of food safety regulatory space,regulatory system innovation,regulatory tool development and regulatory evaluation design.Finally,the thesis analyzes the implementation dilemma of the food safety government smart regulation mode,reference the practice experience of food safety smart regulation in European and American countries,and explores the optimal countermeasures for government smart regulation.From the current situation,the difficulties in the implementation of government smart regulation are manifested in the heterogeneity of the market regulation system,the imbalance of social regulation rights and responsibilities,the internal friction of government regulation power,the fragmentation of the food safety chain and the limitations of regulation impact assessment.The complexity stems from the central-local conflicts caused by the unclear division of regulatory powers,and the disordered participation caused by the unreasonable layout of the regulatory space.Looking back at the food safety regulation practice in European and American countries,it is generally affected by the government’s smart regulation reform,which is embodied in the construction of a series of plans,strategies and frameworks such as “smarter food safety”,“regulatory science” and “building the future”.Its public-private collaborative governance and chain measures such as seamless connection,implementation of professional regulation,and cultivation of food safety culture have certain reference significance.The thesis suggests that in the future,the optimization of China’s food safety government’s smart regulation mode should focus on the variable of "smart",increase smart options,and enrich the connotation of smart,including shaping the food safety regulation space,adjusting the food safety regulation system,and expanding the "soft" regulatory tools,and improving food safety regulatory assessment.Among them,the thesis innovatively proposes to establish a space for food safety regulation from the four levels of national,supranational,public and private;it proposes to implement vertical management of market regulation below the provincial level,add food safety inspection bureaus,reorganize comprehensive coordination agencies,and improve the food safety credit system,promote the construction of food safety culture and other specific suggestions;the thesis proposes to establish a food safety supervision and evaluation index system based on the whole chain of food safety and multiple objectives and tasks,and scientifically demonstrates it by comprehensively using the logical framework method,Delphi method and analytic hierarchy process,in order to improve its operability.In general,as an overarching concept,smart regulation is a reshaping of the rationalization of government regulation.Smart regulation provides a new way of thinking for the analysis of government regulatory reform in the field of food safety in China.Based on the macroscopic perspective of regulatory evolution in the era of governance and government regulatory reform,re-examination of the concept and connotation of smart regulation will help to understand a series of changes and innovations in the field of food safety regulation in China since the new era.In addition,through the construction and deconstruction of the analytical framework of the food safety government smart regulation mode,the basic characteristics,main problems and optimization orientations of the food safety government smart regulation can be overviewed and identified.Smart regulation is a government-centered or government-led regulatory innovation.It is a self-correction and iterative upgrade of traditional government regulation,as well as a concrete manifestations of governance modernization.How to enrich and improve the connotation and extension of government smart regulation to meet the needs of Chinese-style modernization is also a topic worthy of long-term exploration.