A Study On Citizen Participation In Public Decision-making Under The Pluralism Of Interests Groups

Since the Reform and Opening to the Outside World, the Chinese society changes greatly: old social order of classes changes, different interests are re-adjusted, new interests groups are being formed, the leading force of interests resource partitioning changes, interests differentiation is being formed, which will inevitably lead to the diversity of interests groups. Citizen participation in public decision-making, citizens have equal access to public power, is the fundamental rights and freedoms. Under the pluralism of interests groups, public awareness of participation in public decision-making gradually increases, and the ways of participation are more and more diversified. Based on the definition of relevant concepts, this paper proposes the relationship between the diversity of interests groups and citizen participation in public decision-making:the process of public decision-making is adjusting interest relationship of multiple interests groups; conversely, the diversity of interests groups is the inner-power of integrating different interests. Besides, this paper also analyzes the impact of the diversity on citizen participation in public decision-making. On the one hand, it helps to integrate different interests groups, which will largely improve public decision-making and ensure fairness and justice. Moreover, it strengthens the supervision of the government and then promotes the process of grassroots democracy. On the other hand, this diversity may bring about some potential negative effects to the political system as well, for example, it increases the difficulty of integration and coordination of different interests and damages public interest, especially weakens the public authority in a society of competitive imbalance between different interests groups, and it also undermines the legitimacy of public decision-making, which will, to a large extent affect the social harmony. Based on the above-mentioned analysis, this paper analyzes its main reasons as follows: the changing concept of social interests, ownership restructuring and changes in social class structure. At the last of this paper, the author puts forward relevant measures from the perspective of economic, political, and social mechanisms to reduce the negative effects of the diverse interests groups on public decision-making, and to expand its positive impact.