Civil Participation In The Administrative Hearing

During the development of human society, citizen participation is an essential part in the process of the political democracy and civilization of a nation, and is the basic way of citizen participating in the public life and managing the public policies that are relevant to their living qualities. Citizen participation became a world wide research topic around1960s, especially in western countries, where citizen participation had a rapid development. In China, a rapidly developing country, it can no longer meet the needs of social development to simply depend on the public services and products provided by the government. Citizen participation is becoming the inevitable trend of social development, for citizens also hope to join in the public policies to express their ideas and obtain the public services and products.We explained our current citizen participation from the point of the administrative hearing. Divided into six chapters, each chapter as follows:Part One Introduction. This chapter describes the background of the article, combined with Research explains the theoretical and practical significance of the study;With the coming of information explosion age after1960s and the rapid development of internet after1990s, citizens know more and more information on the public policies made by the government. As a result, better technology basis had been provided for the citizens to participate in the public policies. Meanwhile, many famous scholars in the field of politics and public administration also proposed the theoretical basis for the movement of citizen participation. Driven by the social development and theory support, the movement has had a rapid development and the research on this filed has been much furthered.The research contributes to the progress of democracy society and the enrichment of the control theory, which can be considered as the theoretical significances of the research. The research helps the government maximize the public service efficiency by letting the citizen participate the public policies, and is helpful for the improvement of citizen participation qualifications, which is the reality significance of the research. Based on the domestic and foreign researches, the paper combs the important concepts, such as citizen participation, public policy and administrative hearing and so on, and states the relations between the three concepts. What’s more, the paper introduces the domestics and foreign research status and has a clear understanding on the field of citizen participation. The foreign research mainly focuses on three aspects. First is the necessity of citizen participation. Second is the method and technology of citizen participation, and the third is the working mode of government in the process of citizen participation. While the domestic research mainly focuses on two aspects. One is the public policies on citizen participation and the other is the citizen participation in the administrative hearings. The research also does a simple comment on the domestic and foreign studies, and introduces the research methods adopted in the paper. The research mainly applies the normative analysis and empirical analysis. Due to the complexity of the study object, the research not only needs to consider the political issues about power, rights and democracy, but also the reality issues, such as social economy development and government management. Therefore, the research covers many academic fields, like sociology, politics, philosophy and the science of law, which requires the research to refer to and comprehensively apply the research methods of relevant subjects.Part Two theoretical basis of the research. This part introduces the citizen culture theory according to the basis of citizen participation. The citizen culture originated from1960s. The representative figure is Almond. G.A. who presented the new public service theory in the view of the necessity of citizen participation. The new public service has become the new mode of the government administration in the contemporary world. The key representatives are Robert B.Denhardt and Janet V.Denhardt, both of whom are the well known American public administrative scholars, introducing the social capital theory in the view of citizen participation forms. Social capital theory is another important theoretical basis of citizen participation and its representative figure is James s.Coleman, who also introduced the citizen participation in the administrative hearings based on the theoretical views. Firstly, good citizen culture is the prerequisite to the active citizen participation in the public policies. Secondly, social organization is one of the important parts of the citizen participation. Besides, the administrative hearing is one of the vital forms of citizen participation and the realization of the democratic, opening and scientific public policy.Part Three The development history of the domestic and foreign administrative hearings. The part mainly introduces the development history of the domestic and foreign administrative hearings and the existing problems in Chinese administrative hearings. The problems are as follows:low credibility of administrative hearings, Government’s shallow understandings of the administrative hearings, low citizen participation and unfit law security system for the administrative hearings.Part Four Analysis on the Existing Problems of Citizen Participation in Administrative Hearings. This part introduces the basic information on the Sichuan Province Power Pricing Hearing. The hearing includes five periods, and they are preparation, participant collection, representative selection, hearing hosting and plan settlement. This part also analyzes the initial guide and service provided by the government and working staffs, as well as the existing problems on the citizen participation traditions and public opinions. The problems are inappropriate working methods of the government, including slow information release, short period of signing in, low publicity, non-transparence of information release and the simple way of reprehensive selection; loss of citizen participation traditions, including potential improvement on the initiative of citizen participation and the deficiency of participation capacity; unfit public opinion system, including weak sense of social responsibilities of news media and the incomplete law relief for news and media workers.Part Five the Development and Perfection of Citizen Participation in the Administrative Hearings.This part reflects after amount of readings on relevant references and analysis on problems. Views on government management revolution and government service construction are proposed to solve the problems on the government working methods. The content of the views are cooperative relations between government and citizens, and law security perfection for citizen participation. Suggestions on the citizen culture and society construction are put forward to solve the loss of citizen participation traditions. The contents of the suggestions are emphasis on school education, social education development, fostering modern citizens with independent opinions and leading the development of social organizations. People should make full use of the news and media to improve the unfit public opinion system, which requires the news media to be independent and report the citizen’s opinions and needs.Part Six Conclusion. This part summarizes the contents and points out the deficiency. The deficiency is as follows:due to the limitation of objective conditions, not many people were interviewed, so data and solid evidence was insufficient; statement on the news media is not that deep. Because of the insufficient previous research and the diversified and unfit national regulations on the public opinions, the writer, as a non-professional know little about law and its relevant research and thus still need to improve the writing profundity.Main views of the paper:One The loss of Citizen Participation Traditions. In China, there is big difference home and abroad in the aspect of citizen participation. The view of democracy is not widely recognized by the citizen. As a result, solid democratic foundation has not been formed among citizens and the citizen participation is not well done in practices. Though China has done a great effect, the perfection of citizen participation still has a long way to go because of the limitation of objective and subjective conditions. It is the basis for citizen participation development to build the citizen society and cultivate the citizen consciousness.Two consciousness deficiency of the Government and its staff on the initiative leading and serving the citizen political participation. The government staff has been used to the authoritative communication of the national policies, lacking of service consciousness, and the citizen has to accept them unconditionally. Though the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China are putting great emphasis on the service idea recent years, and requiring the government staff to change their traditional minds, the result is not satisfactory yet. People still need a long time to explore if they want the condition improved.Three Research Deficiency on the Citizen Participation Theory. There is much research on the citizen participation in China, but no theoretical system is formed. The research areas are messy, which cannot well direct the citizen participation in the Chinese practices.Key contributions of the paper: One is the novel topic. The writer found that few researches are about the administrative hearings based citizen participation. However, according to the current situations of Chinese society, the citizen participation develops rapidly in the administrative hearing area. Especially in recent years, the administrative hearings have become the crucial reference for the policy decisions, which has a great significance on the rapid development of citizen participation. The topic of the paper goes with the social development trend and is an area worth of research.Two is the innovation of views. The paper focuses on the important role that news media and social organizations play in the citizen participation. This is an age of information. News media and internet opinions have great effects on people’s work and life, while few previous researches were about the functions of news media in the citizen participation, though it is an important factor. Meanwhile, social organizations are playing a more and more important role. There is great difference between individual and group participants. Social organization possesses more resources and is easier to attract the attentions from the government and thus better realized the citizen’s benefits. There are lots of researches on social organizations, but few ones are about the role that social organizations play in the administrative hearings. The paper provides new perspectives for the more comprehensive research on the citizen participation.