On The Status Of The Policy Hearings And The Improvement Of The Hearing System

Public policy hearing is a normative program design that when the governmentdepartments make public policies which involve the public interests,it shall listen tothe ideas of interest parties, each aspect of society as well as related experts, in orderto achieve good governance.Public policy hearing is the product of moderndemocracy, is aslo the new way which appears in the administrative process. Itspurpose is to try to get the interest of social parties and feedback of the decision whichrelated to the public policy, in order to make reasonable decisions.In the1990s, marked by the implementation of the "Price Law", the hearingsystem was established in the field of public policy in China in a legal form. In recentyears, the hearing system is increasingly being applied to public life. In the interactivecooperation between the government and public in the decision-making process,itplays a positive role in the improvement of decision-making, and achieves the policyand democracy.Meanwhile, it promotes openness and transparency of the policydecision-making process,and aslo provides a new system platform for citizen toparticipate in the public policy. The hearings are widely adopted in public policydecision-making process from the central government to local governments at alllevels, and aslo applied to the legislative decision-making， pricing decisions,administrative license decision-making, and they are subject to wide public attentionand enthusiastic participation, the social impact is very broad, and have alreadyachieved good effects of policies.Affirming public policy hearing’s positive effects, we should clearly recognizethat, for our part, the hearing system is still in the fledgling stage of development asan exotic in the field of public policy in China, regardless of the theory and thepractice, there are some problems and deficiencies,such as governmentdecision-making authority have not established a correct concept of the hearing,public awareness of hearing function is not accurate, and procedures for construction of the hearing system are not standardized, and etc. Besides,the system of publichearings has been repeatedly criticized in practice, therefore, we need to deepen thetheoretical research.The research idea in this paper is to absorb and learn from the research results,starting from the perspective of political science, summs up the hearing system’sachievements and shortcomings and defects in public policy. Our research on policyhearing system is mainly concentrated in the hearing system itself, does not considerthe external system environment which the hearing system exists. In this study, tooptimize the hearing system of public policy’s system environment for innovation,with emphasis on how to design specific public policy hearings system in order toachieve the purpose of the hearings of the regulatory policies, and strive to effectivelyaddress kinds of problems and difficulties which appears in the practice of the publicpolicy hearings.Use the citizen participation theory, with comprehensive considerationof China’s national conditions and policy practice of the hearing process, and putsforward countermeasures and suggestions to improve our policy hearing system.Designed to provide institutionalized protection for the relevant governmentdepartments’ future democratic decision-making and scientific decision-making,andpromote the democratization and the order of participation in public policy.