A Study On The Communication Of Policy Information Between Central And Local Governments

The public policy is a process consisting of policy making, conducting, supervising, evaluating and re-making.The successful operating of public policy process relies on the effective communication of policy information, which go through the whole process. To some extent, communication of policy information is limited inside government system in China, especially between central government and local governments. Hence, it is very important to make successful information communication between central government and local governments. This paper suggests that it is necessary to begin with the structure of power distribution between central government and local governments, which is on the foundation of bureaucracy.Three means, documents analysis,combination of history and reality, structure-agent analysis is applied in this paper, which is divided into three parts. The first part describes the concept and character of policy information, communication of policy information and bureaucracy, and indicates that the character of bureaucracy obviously exists in the relationship between central government and local governments in China, but this bureaucracy has its own features. In fact, the bureaucracy character in the relationship between central government and local governments is fully showed in the communication of policy information. Bureaucracy is the institution carrier of communication of policy information between central governments and local governments, in which the officials become the main body to operate the communication.The second part points out that there are some problems in the communication of policy information between central government and local governments,such as low accuracy,less smooth of channels and expanding self-interested officials. Then this paper suggests that the cognition about these problems should be started from the bureaucracy structure,operating character and the influence of bureaucracy on officials’ behavior.Too much complexity may lead to information distortion,and the stability and closure property may cause less smooth in communication offering space for self-interested behavior of officials.The third part discuss the value choice and specific actions solving the problems in communication of policy information between central government and local governments. First of all, we should start from improving bureaucracy, rethinking the value choice of it to realize the combination of effect and justice,the combination of government authority and participants diversity and the combination of institution limitation and human activity. On the foundation of value reshaping of bureaucracy, the next is to reform the structure of government,increase transparency of policy information, extend decision-making power of local governments,perfect supervision mechanism,and reform check-up system for officials.