The Unintended Consequences Of Purposive Action: The Policy Analysis Of The Transformation Reform Of The State-run Middle And Primary Schools In China

The original aims of the transformation reform of the middle and primary schools in our country are to stir up the social forces vigor of investing education,to raise money and to change the situation that the education is completely governed by the government.However, it also causes some unfavorable consequences to the social forces'entry to education in the process of the reform.On the other hand,people's understanding about the reform consequences is deficient or incorrect.It will effect the diagnose and remedy of policy problems.So this paper has double aims.One is to response to the practical problems,the other is to criticize unreasonable theories and construct a new theory. A premise of this paper is to clarify the purpose of the transformation reform,to confirm the obj ective consequences of the transformation reform,and to build reasonable relation between them.That is the j ob of the first and second part of the paper.In the first part,the paper points out the purposes of the reform.In the second part,the paper shows facts that it is difficult for the social forces to invest education through the relation between the reform and the development of private schools and the source of finance of the converted school on the basis of the reality and data.Furthermore,the paper demonstrates the real effect that the reform put on the social forces investing education from the two dimensions:time order and logical relation. The aim of the third and forth part of the paper is to explain why the reform cause unintended consequences.In the third part,the paper categorizes various different understanding about the unintended consequences of the reform into three trains of thought. They are the Rational Choice Theory,Evolutionary Rationalism and Social Functionalism. The author poses a synthetic train of thought of policy analysis through comparing several theories.The synthetic thought emphasizes the importance of interpretation of purposes and motives.In the vision of new thought,the paper argues that the objective consequences of the reform are the unintended consequences of purposive action.In the forth part,the paper concretely explains how the reform results in unintended consequences through policy facts. In these two parts,it is not only a process of describing and explaining the practical problems,but a process of criticizing,constructing and applying theory. Because of many limitations,the paper can not give concert method to solve problems thoroughly.That is to say,the motivation of author is to offer a flame to understand the unintended consequences of policy.So the paper draws some conclusions and gives some suggestions for the following researches.The conclusions are as follows:1,it appears unintended consequences in the process of the reform;2)the unintended consequences are rooted in the purposive action;3)the second phrase unintended consequences of the reform belong to the strong unintended consequences.and since that the consequences are weak unintended consequences.In order to get reasonable and reliable measures to solve problems people should resort to new methodology.Just for this reason the paper oppose to separate the relation of intents and consequences to discuss the government responsibilities and criticize the pragmatism and radical policy analysis in the sixth part of the paper.