Private-use Of Public Policy:Features,Motivation And Solutions

Public policies, as input of political systems, are basic methods used by public power institutions to reasonably allocate social public resources. As the representation of social public interest, public institutions have been inevitably asked to carry out public politic activities from the view of public interest and public motivation. Public-use is the nature of public policies, which in detail represents public-owned, public-managed, public-enjoyed, fair, just and open. However, those increasing growing social problems made a great challenge to our government’s value orientation of public-use. Private-use of public policies is one of the destroyers to the public-use, which not only do harm to public credibility of policy makers, but also waste a large quantity of public resources. Since scholars around the world had paid little attention to the private-use issue of public policies, and they had not yet reached an agreement on a systematically and comprehensively solution, it is necessary for us to make a research on motivation and consequences of private-use of public policies, analyze factual cases in detail and then put forward some reasonable solutions.This essay starts from making differences between concepts of public policy and private-use of public policy. And then it probes to consequences of private-use crisis by combination with typical private-use cases. Based on empirical analysis, using mainstream theories, such as interest group theory, logic of collective action and rent-seeking theory, it aims at analyzing private-use motivation in both aspects of theory and practice. This essay believes that the private-use of public policy is triggered by comprehensive function of interest gaming, agency rent-seeking, institutional malfunctioning and cognitive defecting. At the end of this essay, it puts forward some basic methods from multiple angles that help to control private-use of public policy, such as broaden the channels for public participation, deepen system reform, set up policy observation organizations, develop interest groups etc.. It aims at the reversion of public policies’value and public spirit.