Policy At The Beginning Of The Style Theory Of Risk Society

After thirty years of reform and opening-up, it has being widely acknowledged that public policy plays a very important role in seeking social order and the well-being of the masses during the process of economic development and social transformation. However, we actually are faced with the unprecedented risks and indeterminacy when we enjoy this welfare bringing by wealth growth and scientific and technological improvements. All these reality spur the theoretical research of public policy, especially the research of the ’way’ in which policies cope with the difficulty in risk society. A sentence from Yi Jing says that’Any circumstance hitting a limit will begin to change. Change will in turn lead to an unimpeded state, and then lead to continuity.’It tells us that the ’way’ is to ’change’, and this change can be recognized as the evolution of policy style. Therefore, from analysis of the varied policy environments, we could discover the general law about the formation and evolution of policy style, and this research achievement can be valuable for both study and practice if we use it to introspect our policy straits and predict the trend of policy style on the base of the ’double risks’ that we are confronted with recently.The research on policy style began from Policy Style in Western Europe written by Jeremy Richardson, Gunnel Gustafsson and Grant Jordan, and they used this notion to describe the inertia of thinking and doing modes of government during the policy process. Policy style reflects the inclination of policy system in finding, analyzing and resolving policy problems, so it influences a lot to policy-making. Of course, the formation and evolution of a certain style could not be some natural result, but is closely related to the mutual effect between each element in the policy system and the environment outside. To start from displaying the most related notion, we can then explain the specific progress that a policy style is taking shape, point out the key influencing factors and give a definition. Based on these, historical institutionalism and policy learning theory are introduced into my dissertation to complement the analysis framework under which we will discuss the policy style shifts since the foundation of new China on the following three key joints. First stage (1949-1978) is characterized as ’politic oriented—bureaucratic authority’. Second stage (1978-21st century) is known as’market oriented—expert administration’. Third stage (new century till now) can be concluded as ’mixed overlap—interest compromise’. After all these, this dissertation will probe into policy straits caused by globalization and ’double risks’, and sum up policy style changes in the risk society. Therefore, not only can we predict where our policy style can go, but also offer theoretical support for forming and maintaining the new style.