The Divergence Of Preferences And Consensus Building Mechanism In Participatory Policymaking

No matter in western developed or developing countries, the participatory policymaking emerging since the latter part of last century have been or is in the dilemma of invalid or even activated social contradictions. Over the years, scholars in the fields of public management, politics and economics have always been considering that how to evaluate the effectiveness of civic participation and the factors influencing the effectiveness. Either in the aspect of theory, or in the aspect of practice, they have achieved great performances. However, due to excessive focusing on opening mechanism, they have neglected the coordination mechanism in the policy process. Especially under the background of China’s transformation period, increasingly upgraded non-institutionalized civic participation has brought serious influences on the policymaking and implementation. Policy deadlock, stagnated implementation and more and more social cost in policymaking process are enough for us to reflect:why divergent preferences have not been integrated to convergence in the policymaking process of local government? What has led to the intensification of social contradictions instead of being reduced in the policymaking process? Therefore," consensus " should become an important subject in the public policy area. It is urgently to make deep research on concept and mechanism of consensus, so as to take the consensus as the orientation to reflect existing participatory system and policymaking process. The existing consensus researches have performed two kinds of trends:on the basis of normative research, democracy-oriented consensus has achieved rich theoretical results; science-oriented consensus has provided technological solution to promote consensus. However, lack of communication between these two trends, they cannot learn from others’strong points to offset one’s weakness. As the complicated preference integration in realistic policymaking process, they are both lack of applicability. Especially, under the horizon of Western world, it is very difficult to transplant the consensus building theory to political reality in China.Under this reality and theoretical requirements, taking the divergence of multiple subjects’preferences and consensus building mechanism in the participatory policymaking process as research topics, on the basis of related research results of consensus building theories, referring to the preference theory of psychology and group decision-making theory of Management, this paper has defined concepts of "participatory policymaking" and "policy consensus", refined them into operable analysis dimensions and measurement index and constructed " Consensus model of participatory policymaking ". Through the self-developed and designed " Four to One " game behavior experiment, it has verified the influence of right, benefit and information dimension of civic participation in the structure on consensus; targeted at three groups, it has issued questionnaires of smog governance and statistically analyzed the influence of above three dimensions on consensus contents; through analyzing two empirical cases in urban updating and house demolition field, this paper has compared effects and problems of different consensus construction routes in reality and put forward suggestions for promoting consensus formation by China local government in civic participatory policymaking. The study has the following conclusions:1. The consensus building is a process that preferences of multiple subject moves from differences to convergence in changes. For the measurement, there are two dimensions of consensus degree and content. Due to the variability of preference, the formation of policy consensus is not the "zero-sum game" of multiple subjects’preferences relying on market mechanism or democratic process, but the common construction of group preference on the basis of dialogue and cooperation. Therefore, corresponding policy mechanism design should not only absorb and express the preferences of different individuals on some policy subject, but also promote changing individual preferences can gradually convert to group preference. As the measurement of policy consensus, it includes two dimensions of "quantity" and "quality", among which, the measurement of consensus degree includes two indicators of individual preference consistency and group consensus acceptability; the measurement of consensus content includes three indicators of cognition of policy issue, choice of governance subjects and choice of policy tools. 2. The power dimension imbalance of the civic participation is the dominant factor of causing individual preference different. The corresponding change of power relations is building consensus basic strategy. The analysis result of the game behavior experiment shows that, after the disposition of power of decision-makers changes from one monopolizing power into two sides sharing power, it has significantly increased the consistency of individual preference and satisfaction with group decision. The survey results also further prove that the divergence of preferences between the government officials which have more power in the policy process and the general public is comprehensive and profound. In a practical case, the design of "the secondary consultation system" in Shanghai urban transformation through empowering the disadvantaged has changed the original monopoly condition of government, and significantly increased the consensus promotion. On this basis, we think that decentralization of authority will help reduce the divergence of preferences, and promote the multiple subjects of decision-making to reach a consensus of higher satisfaction rate.3. Although the multiple subjects’divergence of policy preferences appears as the conflict of interests, reaching a consensus only through the way of interest coordination is still formulaic and has a legality risk. The analysis of the results of behavioral experiment and questionnaire survey are prove that the change of interest relations of subject and policy issue had no distinct effect on the consistency of individual preference and satisfaction of group decision.It will not for the profit and loss of the personal interests affect the choice of policy tools in the process of policy making involving the citizens. And the space of the government transfer interest is extremely limited, once people suspect the legality of interests tradeoff, it will affect the legitimacy of the entire policy process and credibility of the government, which will seriously weaken the foundation of consensus building.4. The effects of the information dimension of the civic participation construction on policy consensus may differ according to the professionalism of the policy issues. The consensus which built on the basis of the information asymmetry is "premature consensus". The information publication and symmetric equilibrium is an important strategic of the consensus building, especially to the policy issues of high professional. When policy makers attract public to formulate such policy issues, the reasonable intervention of expert group and providing the corresponding information support will significantly promote the policy consensus. On the contrary, building the consensus through artificially monopolizing information is makeshift at best. Under the background of a high development of information, once this kind of information asymmetry pattern is broken,"premature consensus" can rapidly become a profound preference divergence between the two sides, it will more difficult to build the consensus again.