Social Conflicts And Public Policy Change

As a basic form of social existence,"conflict" is a confrontation situation in the process of human interaction and an important motive for social change, which exists among all societies. Since social conflicts exist in all communities, we should study the causes and consequences of social conflicts. This paper argues that public policy is often the source of social conflicts, and the deep-seated cause is the structural tension from to high-speed development in the period of social transformation.Based on the source of social conflict from public policy, this paper focuses on the adjustments and changes of public policy, which can make existing social conflicts play a positive role in social development. In order to respond effectively to a variety of social conflicts in the process of social transformation, policy makers should seize the opportunities for changes of the existing policy system. However, the change of public policy (or even society) depends mainly on the attitudes, preferences, and their ability of policy makers, not only on the conflict itself.The basic assumption of this paper is the way to resolve social conflict is effective, by giving full play to the positive function of social conflict to promote public policy change. This assumption is built on the basis of, one is to admit that social conflict has a particular constructive function, and the other is, it is a core issue of policy change need to be valued to regulate and resolve social conflict through effective policy design and adjustment. If there is no positive change and transformation in the field of public policy, resolving social conflict will become increasingly difficult. At the same time, the change of public policy will be impossible, for there is no good understanding of the significance of social conflict.This paper demonstrates the basic assumption through the case study of "Panyu Conflict", which was caused by the construction of waste incineration power project. The study found that social conflicts have little positive influence on the change of public policy, for the paradox of social conflict, the attitude, preferences, and incapability of policy makers, as well as the imperfect democratic system.The structure of this paper is that the introduction is about the basic assumption and core points of this paper on the basis of literature review. The first chapter is to establish a theoretical framework initially. The third and fourth chapters are the main parts of this paper to describe the case and analyze the causes and consequences, also the reason for the limited performance of social conflict. The last chapter is a brief conclusion for the direction of further study.