Policy Marketing Failure Study

From two dimensions including "enforcement-induction" and "high response-low response",policy mobilization mode can be divided into four modes involving compulsory indoctrination,policy promotion,response for release and policy marketing.Policy marketing is a special policy mobilization mode and policy management tool,whose specific characteristic is public sectors such as government use concepts and technologies similar to that of the enterprise to understand and respond the appeals of the policy object in order to promote the smooth implementation of a policy agenda or security policy,and besides,use persuasive and inductive policy tools to obtain the support of the public through integrating policy resources and eventually meet the demand of both public sectors and objects and promote the overall social welfare.After The Third Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Party,mobilization mode transformation of Chinese government started,China's policy mobilization mode shifts from compulsory indoctrination to policy marketing.The Third Session of the sixteenth Central Committee of the Party proposing service-oriented government.Although governments at various levels fail to explicitly propose the concept of policy marketing,the application of marketing in policy mobilization is increasing.However,some local governments can not correctly and comprehensively refer mature "marketing" technology to cause marketing policy failure which refers to policy marketing is not started at appropriate times in policy mobilization of government and public sectors,or "policy marketing" started fails to promote the recognition and support of policy objects to the policy,or this recognition and support do not last long so as to fail to produce enough resources to ensure the successful implementation of next policy marketing.The policy marketing failures can be divided to starting failure(the policy marketing does not start or the start lagged),output failure(integrated or segmented output failure),and feedback failure(route dependency failure or spillover effect failure).Why did policy advocators fail to prevent policy marketing failure with more mature marketing management concepts?The answer is the primary focus of this paper.On the basis of early research findings of domestic and foreign scholars,this paper holds that whether policy marketing,as a policy mobilization mode,is applied and its effect is closely related with policy network structure relation.The application of policy marketing is a progressive process where policy network members learn.Policy marketing study and policy network structure relation are supportive to each other in construction.Based on this judgment,the author puts forward an integrated analysis model of "policy network structure-policy marketing study" for policy marketing failure,and aims to explain the mechanism of policy marketing failure,which can be interpreted as follows.The features of policy network structure relation can be studied from two dimensions.One is the "competing" ability of policy advocacy coalition,including the amount of resources policy network members enjoy,the power of each policy advocacy coalition on this basis and their position in policy process.The other one is the interaction degree between policy network members and policy advocacy coalition,and the openness of policy network on this basis.Whether policy marketing will be applied and its effect are closely related to the two dimensions because the former determines if both parties of policy marketing have the ability and appeal for exchange on an equal basis while the latter determines if both parties have the opportunities and channels for exchange on an equal basis.When the policy mobilizing party monopolizes the policy resources in a highly closed policy network,policy marketing will not start.When policy mobilizing parties are equal in competitiveness in a highly open policy network with policy network members of ability,appeal,opportunities and channels for exchange on an equal basis,policy marketing will succeed.When the policy mobilizing party fails to monopolizes policy resources objectively,policy targets become more competitive but the policy network remains relatively closed.The value appeal,exchange anticipation and the corresponding game strategies of both policy marketing parties seldom reach an agreement.As a result,policy marketing will fail.Policy marketing concepts and techniques are distributed at "secondary layer","close-to-core layer" and "fundamental core layer".The application of policy marketing is a progressive process where policy network members learn the policy marketing mode.For the policy mobilizing party,its applications strategies of policy marketing tend to go through "technique-operation level"(with reference to policy marketing techniques but no considerations of the "integrity" of techniques),"management-tactics level"(with full consideration to the collaboration between"product","price" "channel" and "promotion" and integration among policy marketing departments for the purpose of optimal policy marketing effect)and"value-strategy level"(with the focus on construction of firm and trustworthy cooperation and consultation mechanism between marketing subjects and objects).For policy targets,their policy responses also change in between "indifferentresponse","fight" as well as "cooperation and participation".Although the policy responses of both parties may not correspond or necessarily present standard linear evaluation due to the complexity of policy network environment in practice,it suggests an overall pattern that develops from the shallower to the deeper and the core level.The process of policy marketing learning is also gradually changing the competing ability of policy advocacy coalition and openness of policy network,which in turn constructs policy network structure relation.This paper compares the policy marketing cases,including "charging based on waste bag" in Taipei,PX project event in Haicang,Xiamen and waste sorting and reducing policy in Shenzhen,to verify the correlation between policy network structure and policy marketing strategy.On the basis of analysis of policy marketing application in waste incineration plant construction in Shenzhen from 1988 to 2014,the paper also describes the progressive process in which both policy marketing parties learn the mobilization mode and the mutually supportive effect between policy marketing parties' strategy selection and policy network relations.This paper argues that it is a key to resolve marketing policy failures by improving the ability and opportunities for policy network members to participate,increasing the openness of policy network by means of institutionalized approaches and eventually,making changes to policy network structure.To be specific,the improvements shall be made from three aspects,including the technical level,value remodeling("equal emphasis on publicity and manufacturability","establishment of customer-oriented concept","deliberative democracy experience")and institutional norms("performance evaluation reform","establishment of partnership","administrative process reengineering").