A Study On Reasons And Countermeasures Of Short-term Behavior In The Public Policy Decision-making Process Of The Local Government

The research defines short-term behaviors in governmental public policy decision-making based on the examination of such concepts as the local governments, public policy decision-making and short-term behavior, etc. Then five kinds of macro-level outcomes resulting from short-term behaviors of local governments in public policy decision-making process were analyzed. They are: ineffective resources using, ignorance of ecological environmental protection, local protectionism, deficiency of investment in education and agriculture and overemphasis on short-term performance of officials. The research argued that these short-term behaviors would lead to five kinds of negative consequences: the great impairment of the sustainable ability of the nation, slowing down the actualization of the reforming goals, weaken the authority of the central government, holding back the improvement of the national competitive advantage, shaking the authority and legal basis of local government.There are many reasons that lead to short-term behavior of local government in public policy decision-making. The research divided all these reasons into two categories: subjective involuntary behavior and subjective intentional behavior. Subjective involuntary behavior is cased by two kind of reasons: (1) lacking of key information for decision making; (2) insufficiency of the decision maker's cognitive ability. Subjective intentional behavior is caused by internal factor and outer factors. Internal factors include: the tendency of local government officials pursuing advantage for himself; the tendency of government officials making inappropriate choice when he has multi responsibilities and duties. Outer factors refer to the circumstance government officials are in which may have important influence on their decision-making process. These outer factors include: limitation in the political system (the bias of measurement & evaluation system and selection & appointment system; the negative effect of post term system; the incompleteness of supervision system; the incompleteness of responsibility-tracking system) and badness of social cultural circumstance. In real life situation, subjective intentional behavior is the result of the interaction between internal factors and outer factors.In practice, the reason leading to specific short-term behavior is not unitary butvery complicated. Most often, the reason is a combination and interaction of these subjective and objective factors in different time, different situation, with different mode and different intensity.Finally, the research comes up with seven ways to manage the local governmental short-term behavior in public policy decision-making: innovating and improving the measurement & evaluation system and selection &appointment system; building up sound decision-consulting system; building up the hearing of witnesses system; strengthening the supervision system of the policy-making power, building up the responsibility-tracking system, cultivating and training the local government officials and fostering a better social cultural circumstance.What should be emphasized here is that the research does not follow the view that subjective intentional behavior is solely caused by officials' tendency to pursue self-interest. On the contrary, the research demonstrates its creativity by arguing that the tendency of officials making inappropriate choice when he has multi responsibilities and duties also is a very important internal factor that leads to subjective intentional behavior. Following the analytical line of "relation-role-responsibility & duty", the research argues that the complicated relation and multi roles officials undertaking contribute to his multi responsibility and duty, which means that officials have to give up some of his responsibility and duty in public policy decision-making process. That is, during the process, officials always tend to undertake those responsibility and duties that is direct; he is familiar with and related to some intimate groups. Rather, officials tend to give up those remote and indirect responsibility and duty, which is very important in the long run. This kind of inappropriate choosing tendency, combined with other internal and outer factors, leading to decision-making bias and short-term behaviors. During the public policy decision-making process, most of the short-term behaviors are caused by such kind of inappropriate choosing tendency rather than those caused by self-interest pursuing.