Study On The Cost-benefit Analysis Of Citizen Participation In Public Policy Making

The participation of citizens in public policy formulation is a basic part of the democratic and political establishment of our country, which is also an essential guarantee for building a harmonious society. On the one hand, citizens' participating in policy making can satisfy the rights and wishes of public participation and realize the tolerance and integration of the diverse interests so as to make policies more scientific and practical. On the other hand, it may be useful for reducing the drag of policy implementation and the cost of policy-making to enhance the legitimacy foundation of the policy. Based on this, it is of both theoretical and practical significance to discuss the problems of citizen participation in Chinese public policy-making by virtue of the cost-income analysis.This paper first studies the basic concept and the theory foundation of citizens' participating in policy making, and puts great emphasis on analyzing the concept and meaning of cost-benefit analysis. After that, it throws light on the steps of cost-benefit analysis from the following five respects: targeting, listing the cost and benefit, analyzing the factors influencing the cost and benefit, calculate costs and benefits and reaching a conclusion. Then the paper explores the relationship between cost-benefit and citizens' participating in policy making. The analysis to the above three parts mainly forms theory base for the research of the paper.In the base of theoretical exposition, by studying the classify and construction of the cost and benefit, the paper divides the cost and benefit of citizens' participating in policy making into three classes which are economic costs, social costs and the institution costs, and tries to set up a cost - income model of the citizens' participating in policy making of our county on three levels: the logical standing point, the construction thinking and the basic model. This is the focus and also the key of the paper. Then, by taking Dog Keeping Management Provisions of Guangzhou as an example, the paper analyzes the cost and benefit in this case with cost-benefit analytical model as tools through analyzing the cause and process of citizen participation in the regulations.Finally, by using the method of combination of theory and model, the paper presents cost-benefit strategies of citizens' participating in policy making which are oriented by reducing the cost associated with public participation as well as promoting participant benefit from four aspects. These include focusing on spreading the cost-benefit idea and strengthening the efficiency idea of cost and benefit analysis from citizen and government two levels; actively improving citizens' participating condition and putting forward countermeasures to reduce the cost of citizen participation from citizen culture, participation channels, e-government and legal institutions and other aspects; standardizing citizen participation processes and analyzing the methods of enhancing participation benefit; perfecting cost-benefit appraisal system by designing the evaluation index scientifically, improving evaluation system and paying attention to the combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis.