A Study On The Prevention Of Decision-making Mistakes By The Local Governments

Government decision-making is the principal link of government management. In recent years, decision-making mistakes of government occur frequently, which enormously influences the sound development of economic construction and the social harmony and stability, and hurt the image of the Party and the government. Therefore, preventing decision-making mistakes and promoting the scientific and democratic nature of decision-making is an important agenda for governments of all levels.This paper makes a summary and retrospection of the previous and current studies on public decision-making mistakes by scholars from home and abroad, which forms the basis of the present paper. Next, decision-making, system and related concepts are defined. Then, judging criteria of government decision-making mistakes are raised from the following three perspectives: the value of government decision-making, the results of decision-making and the benefits and costs of decision-making. Main reasons for government decision-making mistakes are explored by analyzing typical cases of government decision-making mistakes. This paper proposes that the reasons for government decision-making mistakes are divided into subjective and objective reasons. Subjective reasons are value deviation of the decision-makers, the lack in sense of responsibility of the decision-makers and the lack in knowledge on the decision-making science of decision-makers. The objective reasons are the nonstandard decision-making procedures, the inadequate reasoning of expert consultation, the insufficient democratic participation of decision-making , the incomplete evaluation and supervision systems of decision-making and the loose responsibility-ascertained system for decision-making.Based on the above analyses, in view of the weaknesses of government decision-making,countermeasures against government decision-making mistakes are proposed from the following three aspect : decision-makers , decision-making procedures and decision-making methods. Specially, they include enhancing the quality of decision-makers, standardizing the procedures of decision-making, perfecting the reasoning system of expert consultation , perfecting the citizen-participating system of decision-making, bettering the supervision mechanism of government decision-making , establishing and bettering the responsibility-ascertained system of decision-making mistakes.