The Causes And Countermeasures Of Local Government’s Public Policy Short-Sightedness

Recently, the local government’s public policy short-sightedness is serious. The local government’s public policy short-sightedness refers to some ideas or behavior of public policy-making subject or executive main body that they run after short-term interests and local interests while ignoring the long-term interests and overall interests. To some extent, the local government represents the entire government to the public, the local government’s public policy short-sightedness makes the government a form of mercenary. It severely damaged the image of the party and the government, did harm to the relationship between government and community, and especially made itself against the public interest.The text analyses the public policy short-sightedness through positive analysis and documentary analysis from the perspective of Public Choice theory. The local government’s public policy short-sightedness is divided into behavioral strategies short-sightedness, interest orientation short-sightedness and value orientation short-sightedness. Firstly, logically based on the hypothesis of "economic man", the expansion of government selfishness is the initial reason of the public policy short-sightedness, so we need to adjust the interest relationship between local governments. Secondly, to deal with the local government’s public policy short-sightedness caused by law missing, strengthening the system of administration by constitution as a strategy is needed. Thirdly, only procedural justice can guide the fairness and justice of the results. Government decision procedure failure is the fundamental cause of the local government’s public policy short-sightedness, and we must strengthen the programs construction of civic participation in public policy formulation. Fourth, Public Choice theory emphasizes that government in the collective activities must follow certain rules, for rules can regulate the behavior of people involved in collective actions to produce optimal results. Therefore, we need to improve the mechanism of public policy to eliminate the local government’s public policy short-sightedness.This paper is arranged as follows. The first chapter mainly introduces the types of the local government’s public policy short-sightedness. The second chapter and the third chapter respectively analyze the causes and counter-measures of the local government’s public policy short-sightedness. It argues that the expansion of government selfishness is the initial reason, the lack of rule of law is the root cause, the government decision procedure failure is the fundamental cause and faultiness of the mechanism of public policy is the significant cause. We must adjust the interest relationship between local governments, strengthen the system of administration by constitution and the programs construction of civic participation in public policy formulation, improving the mechanism of public policy to eliminate the local government’s public policy short-sightedness.This paper argues that essence of the local government’s public policy short-sightedness is a policy imperfection mainly caused by expansion of government selfishness and lack of rule of law in administrative system. The text involves the typical types of the local government’s public policy short-sightedness but cannot make it a complete classification, so the reason analysis is not thorough. Some countermeasures like requiring the local government self-restraint is unpractical, it needs a more powerful mechanism and be combined with other disciplines to eliminate the local government’s public policy short-sightedness.