Study On China's Food Safety Governance Based On Institutional Arrangement

Since the 1990s, China's food industry growing rapidly. Total grain output increased by 22.03 per cent in 2009 more than that of the 1990. The total output of meat, aquatic products, and sugar increased by 205.19 per cent,320.36 per cent,69.92 per cent in 2009 respectively more than that of the 1990. The food industry has become an important pillar industry in China. However, the serious incidents of food safety have occurred frequently.95.8 per cent of urban consumers and 94.5 per cent of rural consumers focused on food safety issues in 2008. The increasingly serious food safety endangering not only consumer's health but only the sustainable development of food industry and the state reputation. It leads to an urgent study on food safety issues.The majority of domestic literatures analyzed the food safety issues from the point of view on the relationship between the government and the market, and emphasized the impacts of the government and the market on food safety. The above analysis had its rationality and given a lot of inspiration to the policy-makers. But it ignored the role of social forces, and formed easily a structure of binary thinking:market failure can be corrected only by the government, while government failure can be corrected only by the market. The structure of binary thinking would be in trouble when the government and market failure in the food safety at the same time. We argue that government, food supplier, and social intermediary organization are three important protagonists of food safety governance based on the nature of food safety. They represent the forces of state, market and society respectively, and their behavior directly impact on the overall performance of food safety governance. So, food safety should be understood on the base of the cooperative relationship of among the government, the food supplier, and the social intermediary organization. Based on the above analysis, this paper applies institutional economics and public management theory to analyze the following hypothesis from the theoretical and empirical aspects:the performance food safety governance depends on the cooperative and interactive relationship of among the government, the food supplier, and the social intermediary organization.At the theoretical analysis aspects, this thesis firstly definite the concept of food safety governance:it refers to the institutional arrangements and implementation process of which ensures consumers get safe food what they want through the interactive relationship of among the government, the food supplier, and the social intermediary organization. Based the concept of food safety governance, the thesis proposes the research hypothesis, establishes an institutional analysis framework of food safety governance, and provides a logical analysis line for the various parts of this paper. Secondly, the thesis demonstrates the proposition of which the institutional arrangements depend on the food safety attributes through analyzing the logical relationship of between food safety attributes and institutional arrangements. And reveals the inevitable process of turning from the non-cooperative game to the cooperative game by applying game theory to analyze the relationship of between the food safety protagonist's behavior choices and the institutional structure.At the empirical analysis aspects, the thesis analyzes the performance and behavior of the government, the food supply organizations and the social intermediary organizations in the food safety governance, and analyzes institutional factors of their non-cooperative behavior and its impact on the overall performance of China's food safety. Based on the empirical analysis, the thesis further demonstrates the necessity of mechanism of multiprotagonists cooperative governance in food safety, analyzes the prerequisite, core and guarantee of the mechanism establishment, and proposes the corresponding measures. The thesis extends the research perspective of food safety, and enriches the research content of food safety in institutional economics. The views and measures of performance improvement of food safety governance proposed by this paper would provide enlightenment for the mechanism establishment of China's current food safety governance...