| NIMBY, namely "not to build in my backyard", is a word that is used to describe the phenomenon that new developing plan are opposed by some specific regions or residents living in vicinity. In recent years, with the rapid development of China’s economy and society, environmental risks which has been accumulated for a long time continue to be salient. And the mass incidents which mainly appeal to environment protection occur frequently. Among them, the confliction of NIMBY which is caused by the opposition of public selection of site and construction which has potential risk is particularly striking. In fact, the words "NIMBY" rarely have been reported in China, while the international community has had its more comprehensive and in-depth interpretation. As early as the1970s, American scholar O’ Hare first proposed the concept of "NIMBY", which is used to outline those facilities that though they can enhance the overall welfare of society, they make negative influence on people nearby. In Asia, NIMBY began in the1990s in Japan firstly, and it quickly swept through China’s Hong Kong and Taiwan. With the acceleration of the process of urbanization in China, consumer culture is pervasive and the size of urban steadily rises. Therefore, NIMBY has been incorporated in the wave of social transformation.Like the past social transformation in western developed countries, social transformation of our country also experiences a strange paradox. That is, social, economic and technological development bring about a huge market that demands of public facilities. Although everyone realizes public facilities make a positive influence on promoting public good, few people are willing to accept some facilities in their yard with negative externalities. These facilities with the negative externalities include incineration plants, high-voltage transmission lines, funeral home, wireless base stations, etc. Take funeral home as an example. It is generally agreed that the government set up the funeral home, which will bring about overall benefits to the society, and the existence of funeral home is reasonable, but most people will not agree with the government in terms of building a funeral parlor near their home. Therefore, with the continuous progress of China’s urbanization, the phenomenon of mass protests because of "NIMBY" already shows an escalating trend. Only in2012,several typical NIMBY event has occurred in mainland China, such as the mass incidents against molybdenum copper project in Shifang in Sichuan province, the mass incidents caused by against Japanese Prince Paper Mill’s polluting the sea in Qidong, Jiangsu and the mass incidents against the PX project in Ningbo, Zhejiang, etc.International experience shows that NIMBY should not be a phenomenon that people need to overcome, but it should be a reality to adjust. The conflictions of NIMBY surely are expressed in the form of social conflicts and mass incidents, but its spiritual connotation actually has gone beyond the areas of the maintenance of social stability and crisis management. We should know that government by the name of the public interest against the citizens’ legitimate rights. What’s more, we should realize the potential hazards of traditional elite dictatorial governance and officials’indifference to the interests of individual citizens under representative democracy. So the decision-making operation of the government suffered a major public crisis at present. Under the statute of public reason, deliberative democracy governance which dialectically develops the traditional governance model and bridges the gap between value rationality and instrumental rationality and between the public and personal interests provides guidelines for the NIMBY conflicts to reach a consensus in the form of dialogue and negotiation rather than violent non-cooperation. The fundamental solutions to the NIMBY conflicts are by building the mechanism of the civic participation, risk communication, balancing interest and the interaction mechanism of rationality, giving citizens opportunities to equal consultation, open dialogue and collaboration cohabitation with the government, so that they can really participate in the policy decision of NIMBY concerning about their own interests. Through multiple subjects’fully rational discussion, dialogue, negotiation, review and correction of which may be doped "pseudo-public interest" in the process of the public decision-making, it can promote the return of the public nature, and ensure that government can rationally make a public policy to benefit all stakeholders, especially vulnerable groups.All in all, the government’s improving and adjusting public policy is undoubtedly dominant. Due to contain public participation, dialogue, communication and cooperation spirit, deliberative democracy has become an important reference theory of governmental reform, and an effective way of the good governance and well-ordered of our society. |
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