The Policy Network Theory And Its Application

With the globalization, internationalization, the continuous development of information, the scope of government responsibility becomes expand. Country's politics tending to disaggregation, decentralization and fragmentation, more interest groups or policy communities are admitted into the policy arena, making the increasing complexity of public affairs. While the traditional pluralism and corporatism can not explain and resolve the political situation, thus the policy network theory emerged, which is based on meso level research methods making up the macro level and micro level' cracks in research methods.Policy network theory focuses on the interdependence and cooperation between public-private policy actors forming the network structure of relations in the process of public policy. It is the policy community at the core of the policy network theory, through the structure, formal networks, group interaction and the interaction approaches, shows the competition and cooperation interaction between policy bodies in policy-making process, but also shows a more clear real picture in the process of contemporary policy. As a new public policy research approach, policy network theory pioneers a new unit in the policy analysis. It is of great importance in guarding practice in domestic and abroad.The paper can be divided into the following five parts:Part I . Introduction. In this part, it elaborates the research background, research significance as well as the present research situation in domestic and foreign countries, research value and limitation and so on. Meanwhile, it introduces the research method, the framework and the innovation spot of this paper.Part II. The background of the development of policy network theory. It expounds the realistic and theoretical background of the development of policy network theory.Part III. The basic content of policy network theory. It Sums up the scholars' definition of policy network from four perspectives, namely main bodies, resources, four representative categories of policy network. Finally, it introduces four analysis approaches of policy network.PartIV. The application of policy network theory. It mainly introduces the application of policy network theory in policy-making and policy implementation processes as well as three application models, namely network governance, interest intermediary and organization interaction. Finally it followed a case study of British agriculture policy from the view of policy network.PartV. The value and challenges of policy network theory. First of all, it analyses the value of policy network theory as a new research method, and then analyses its enlightenment to China as well as the challenges and applicability.