The Research Of Interest Groups’ Influence On Public Formulation

Since the policy of reform and opening up, along with the shift from planned economy to market economy and the fast-growing economy, China has made great changes in all aspects. The past decades have witnessed increasingly complex configuration of interest parties, as well as significant changes in social classes. In fact, many interest groups have come into being.According to Gabrielle·A·Almond, there are four types of interest groups: community interest groups, non-community interest groups, institutional interest groups and non-institutional interest groups. The interest groups in China can also be roughly divided into the above four types.Interest groups aims to maintain and pursue interests by attempting to influencing public policies. Interest groups in China, by means of lobbying, alliance cooperation, guiding public opinion, power penetration and informal participation, have influence on the formulation of public policies. This kind of influence exists in the whole process of public policy formulation, including the defining of policy problems, policy agenda, program planning, and policy legitimation.Interest groups’influence on public policy formulation has various effects. On the positive side, it can balance the interest parties, improve the efficiency of decision-making, and promote the democratic and scientific process of decision-making. On the negative side, it does harm to the operation of public power, leads to power corruption, and compromises the impartiality and fairness of decision-making and weakens the authority of policies. The unbalanced development between interest groups and the leaky decision-making system are the main reasons for the negative impactAt present, political reform is deepening and the governance-oriented government is transforming into a service-oriented one. A service-oriented government is different from the traditional governance-oriented one in many ways in the process of public policy formulation. It speaks for the benefits of the majority. While making policies, it takes a more active role in policy construction, pays more attention the appropriateness of policy agenda, and comes up with many backup plans for policy programs and chooses from them the best one. It will take the basic mode of "bottom-up" while formulating public policies, emphasizing public participation and transparency of the decision-making process, and strengthening the mechanism of accountability.In the process of public policy formulation, service-oriented government can better regulate the influences brought by interest groups. To be specific, government can regulate the influences from three aspects, namely, the interest groups, government itself, and social public. As for the interest groups, government can apply a sound mechanism in which the interest groups can participate in public policy formulation, balance the influences brought by different interest groups, and crack down on their misconduct in the process. As for government itself, it can apply a perfect public policy formulation mechanism, strengthen self-building, and open up an efficient channel for communication with interest groups. As for social public, the government can get the public more involved in public policy formulation, and guarantee their rights of supervision in this process. In this way, we can further let play the positive effects interest groups bring about in public policy formulation, and in the meanwhile eliminate the negative effects, so that we can promote our society in an orderly and harmonious way.