Studying The Change Of Government’s Functions In The Vision Of Policy Types

Since the reform and opening up, China has changed enormously, not only from the original planned economy to the socialist market economy in the social-economic model, but also the government function mode, which was changed from the rule-oriented to the management government. With the advance of the marketization as well as the globalization and the rise of the New Public Management Movement, there is unavoidable friction and conflict between the management government model and the market economy, in the condition of the marketization, informatization and socialization, it’s in sore need of further transformation of government’s functions, which is turned from the management government to the service-oriented government.The transformation of government’s functions was first put forward since the 1980s, and so far, transformation of government’s functions has been one of the important themes of the administrative system reform in our country. The practice of administrative system reform and the endeavor of transformation government’s functions had been years, what changes exactly to our government’s functions? How to observe and describe the transformation of government’s functions? What are the problems in the process of transformation of government’s functions? What is the future direction?To answer these questions, firstly, this paper explains the definition and features of government’s functions and public policy as well as the basic theories of the public policy types, then reviews the literatures about the research on transformation of government’s functions and public policy types both at home and abroad.Secondly, based on the existing relevant theories, it lays emphasis on using content analysis to analyze 626 policy texts on higher education since the reform and opening up that is from 1978 to 2014, which issued by the central government. To construct the analytical framework mainly through several aspects such as issuing date, issuing departments, the actuating range and types of educational policy etc., to determine the specific content of the policy texts as one analysis unit, encode it according to category and do frequency statistics and quantitative analysis as well as the overall analysis on this basis, to describe the higher educational policies from different periods belong to which public policy types, to reflect the current situation in the evolution of government’s functions based on the actuating range and operation of governmental powers, besides, to sum up the logic of transmutation in higher educational policies since China’s reform and opening up in line accordance with the content of policy texts.Finally, on the basis of the quantitative research of China’s higher educational policies, summarized two kinds of contradiction——ideal and reality, regulatory and service——in transformation of government’s functions. At the same time, introducing and learning from the successful experience of transformation of government’s functions in developed countries such as the United States, European Union and Japan, pointing out that the future direction of transformation of government’s functions is to build the limited, service-oriented government.