Institutional Inertia,Attention Shift And Policy Change

Municipal solid waste management has increasingly become an important factor affecting the improvement of urban quality.It is not only an important livelihood issue,but also the key to promoting the construction of ecological civilization and the building of beautiful China.With the acceleration of urbanization and the rise of consumer society,the problem of municipal solid waste has gradually exposed and become increasingly serious,especially in large and medium-sized cities,now more than two-thirds of the cities are in the dilemma of "garbage siege".Since China launched special policies on the management of municipal solid waste in the 1980s,it has gone through the early stage of random discard and simple treatment,the centralized collection and treatment of urban and rural sanitation integration,and now it has entered the comprehensive treatment stage of source classification.However,the development and changes have not been smooth sailing,it has been faced with the contradiction between the large-scale construction of incineration facilities and frequent anti-incineration conflicts,and the phenomenon of sometimes halting and sometimes active enthusiasm appeared in the promotion of garbage classification.Based on these practical observations and paradoxical tension,the question that this research attempts to explore is what kind of changes have taken place in the development of municipal solid waste management policies in the past 40 years?In China's institutional structure and policy operation,how to understand the operation mechanism and internal force of this kind of change?With the development of policy change theory,more and more researchers have recognized the non-linear development form of policy change.Combined with the analysis of the representative theories of policy change at home and abroad,this study starts from three perspectives to evaluate its shortcomings and enlightenment,and then put forward the "Institutional Inertia-Attention Shift" analysis framework,which is used to analyze the phases and forms of municipal solid waste management policy changes,the equilibrium change mechanism,and the punctuated influencing factors and causal mechanisms,in order to provide better policy suggestions for policy optimization and urban governance,and further respond to and promote the development of localized policy change theory.In the process of constructing and using the "Institutional Inertia—Attention Shift"framework to conduct empirical analysis of changes in policies,this research comprehensively uses literature analysis,content analysis,fsQCA,historical and logical unity Method,and semi-structured interview method to analyze the morphological characteristics,internal mechanism and causal mechanism of China's municipal solid waste management policy.In particular,this research has made the following arrangements in the process of empirical analysis:First,in the analysis and judgment of the changes in the municipal solid waste management policies,set the judgment standard with the help of the sequence distribution of the policy paradigm theory,then the policy texts are coded and interpreted through the combination with the policy content analysis method,and divide into four periods,namely:the first equilibrium period(1986-2003)of passive end management,the second equilibrium period of encourage market participation(2004-2009),the punctuated period of frequent conflicts and the shift to source prevention(2010-2016),and the new equilibrium period of source prevention and public participation(2017-present).Secondly,in the explanation of the mechanism that promotes equilibrium changes,with the help of the influence of the institutional structure on the operation process of China's policies,a top-down "three-stage" policy operation process is derived,that is,"central policy formulation-local preference implementation-social interaction feedback",and on this basis,it analyzes the resistance and cost effect of institutional inertia in the process of policy operation:the value orientation increases the cost of cognitive,the path dependence improves the cost of decision-making and transactions,and the lack of participation channels raises the cost of information,and further analyzes the internal operating mechanism of the generation,maintenance and promotion of the equilibrium period in the change of policies.Thirdly,in the analysis of the causal mechanism for the punctuated occurrence,the paper conducts a comparative analysis of multiple cases on the anti-incineration conflicts faced by the implementation of the policy in various regions.And discusses and verifies the influencing factors and causal mechanism through fsQCA method,and then summarizes into four modes:"negative image-media interaction" "focus-absorption""media-absorption",and "mobilization-consensus",which complete the intermediate logical link from the opening of the window of opportunity to the emergence of punctuated results.At last,based on the results of the empirical analysis,the analysis framework of"Institutional Inertia—Attention Shift" is supplemented and improved,and the analysis conclusions of the balanced operation mechanism and the discontinuous causal mechanism are combined with the top-level design and process optimization of the municipal solid waste management policy,and the future development of the municipal solid waste management policy is prospected.Due to the author's limited knowledge ability,the study may contribute to the existing literature from the following aspects:1)The expansion of the cognitive boundary of policy changes.This study takes a positive attitude towards the morphological judgment of the punctuated and equilibrium changes.After integrating the policy paradigm theory,the morphological judgment standard are reset,and through the content analysis of the policy text materials,the original research materials and judgment standards applied in the field of public finance are expanded,and regard the punctuated period as a period of paradoxical prominence.2)By refining the policy operation process,the mechanism of institutional inertia on equilibrium transition is analyzed.The traditional policy change theories focuse on the decision-making process which is a cross-sectional observation perspective,and ignore the attention to the logic of gradual change.This research has refined China's policy operation process from top to bottom in three stages,and through the system of inertia in the operation process analyses the inner mechanism of the equilibrium change,which is a diachronic perspective that focuses on the long-term development of policies.3)Through the refinement and specific analysis of the "the field of punctuation" concept,the causal mechanism of policy discontinuity is supplemented.Traditional theories have not paid enough attention to the intermediate causal mechanism from the opening of the "window of opportunity" to the punctuated appearance.This research analysis the behavioral interaction of subjects after the window of opportunity was opened through fsQCA,and respond to the traditional theory on the causal mechanism.And from this,the optimization of the intermittent transition process are further discussed.