Research On Citizen Participation Issues In Price Hearing Of Public Utility In Tongliao City

With the acceleration of the democratization process in China,the awareness of citizens' participation in social governance and public decision-making has been increasing,and the depth and breadth of participation have also been expanding.In his report to the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China,General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that "we should innovate social governance and build a social governance pattern featuring joint contribution,shared governance and shared benefits",which further reflects the importance attached by the state to citizen participation.As an important way for citizens to participate in social governance,price hearing system plays an important role in making the government's price decision more fully reflect the democratic principle,and making the price of public utilities and public goods conform to the interests and demands of the public.Since the price hearing system established in our country,price departments have organized public utilities price hearing thousands of times,the content involved in residential water and electricity,natural gas,central heating,public transportation,and other areas of the people's livelihood,the hearings has positive effects in democratization and scientific process of government decision-making of price.However,with the widespread application of the price hearing system,the issues of citizen participation have also drew attentions of the public administration and the whole society.Such as price information asymmetry of hearing,single hearing form,insufficient citizen participation validity,imperfect citizen participation guarantee mechanism,etc.,these problems not only affect the positivity and the effectiveness of citizen participation,but also have negative impacts on the government's credibility.Therefore,it is necessary to find the crux of the problems through investigation and study,and gradually improve the problems.At present,there are extensive and in-depth studies on the price hearing system in China's academic sector,but there are relatively few studies on the combination of price hearing and citizen participation.Based on the issues mentioned above,this paper elaborates on the background and citizen participation of public utility price hearing,and takes Tongliao city as an example,starting from the practice of public utility price hearing,discusses how to achieve effective citizen participation in public utility price hearing.Analyze the existing problems and causes through empirical research,and put forward some countermeasures to improve the the effectiveness of citizen participation,so as to help the citizens get further understandings of the price hearing,and to participate in it,which would be more realistic and effective encouragements for citizens to participate in social governance.At the same time,the author also provides some reference to local government on standardizing management of the hearing and decision democratization.