Policy Experimentation Pattern Research In China’s Reform Process

"Policy experimentation" has very distinct Chinese characteristics from the date of birth and has throughout the history of China since the beginning of the land revolution. Since the reform and opening, most of the significant policies that China implemented, or policies in the stage before the implementation process, have small-scale tests before large scale pursuing. "policy experimentation" has then become an integral part of China’s reform process."Policy experimentation", which is a dynamic developing process, has different types such as experimental points, experimental zones and experimental regulations. But generally all the types of policy experimentation are start from policy issues. However, when personal or organizational expectation deviate from reality, policy issue arises, forced by: the needs of local economic development; the missing part of rules and norms actors action; the interest of local government or the main local micro-stakeholders. People in order to eliminate this deviation began to seek solutions and the “Policy experimentation” is the most Chinese one.Policy experimentation comes from policy issues. After generalized the objective reality process of the evolution from the policy issue to the policy experiment operation, we divide all the operation into two types of activities based on the central and local governments’ different attitude when facing policy experimentation. One is commanding policy experimentation, the other is autonomous policy experimentation. Commanding policy experimentation happens when central government actively promote the experimentation; autonomous policy experimentation happens when local government energetically operate the experimentation but central government’s attitude is not clear or just innocent about the experimentation content; and the experimentation will not occur when both central and local government negatively response the specific policy or regulation. On this basis, by introducing the concept of "pattern" in order to further describe experimentation, two elements have been extracted out from this thesis from the policy experimentation practice- the trigger mechanism for experimentation and the role of the main experimentation parts. This thesis aiming to explore the relationship of these two elements between different combinations and to construct differentiated models for commanding and autonomous policy experimentation.We regard the central and local governments as the main subjects of the policy experimentation. In the commanding policy experimentation, the central government is the organizer, promoter and initiator, also may becomes the new policy maker of a new system(or program) that may be formed in the future. It can be seen as the "first act Group". The local government operates experimentation process under the authority of the central government, can be seen as an agent for the central government, who works together with the main micro action groups. In autonomous policy experimentation, when faces a profitable opportunity or needs to solve difficult problems, local government may spontaneously implement the policy experimentation, as the organizer, initiator and promoter, carried out experimentation activities within the sphere of its power. The central government plays the role of a bystander or outsider, sustained attention or secretly observed the whole process. The trigger mechanism for experimentation is slightly more complicated, mainly divided into external-driven, internal-driven, and command-mobilization three styles. Trigger for autonomous policy experimentation is internal-driven trigger mechanism, while trigger for commanding policy experimentation has two types which need detail classification. External-driven trigger started in the case of that local government is positively coordinated and command-mobilization trigger may show up in the circumstance that local government is negative coordinated with the central.After building the concept model of different policy experimentations, this thesis introduces four actual cases that belong to different types of policy experimentation, in order to test and deep analysis the two model, to describe the relations of elements and the shifts of relations in the start up procedure of the experimentation. Moreover, I verified the models in this thesis and got inspirations from the analysis, looking forward to the future development of China’s policy experimentations and hoping this thesis can play a guiding role.