Between Policy Confidentiality And Information Publicity:Institutional Research Of Civic Participation In Urban Governance In China

From 1960s, global political environment, economic status, and society have changed greatly. More and more scholars in public administration area have demonstrated the necessity and feasibility of civic participation in urban governance. Since the reform and open in China, market economy has developed prosperously, people’s cultural equality has been upgraded, internet has been popularized, all providing full support for civic participation in urban governance. More importantly, the central government has emphasized repeatedly about constructing the national governance system, requiring governments at all levels to build service-oriented government, to administer by law, to guarantee the government information publicity. However, the actual practice of civic participation does not go smoothly, among which, how to keep balance of policy confidentiality and information publicity is troubling city government and is blocking citizen’s participation. This thesis points out dilemmas in civic participation in China, through analyzing the policy of controlling cars’ total quantity in Hangzhou. Citizens didn’t agree with the policy, policy makers’ benefits didn’t match with public benefits, government risk and value of information publicity, and theoretical participation channels didn’t exist in reality, which due to the backward policy making idea, the uncoordinated legal hierarchy, the lack of supporting institution and participation channels. In order to improve these problems, this thesis raises institutional suggestions, claiming that central and local governments should clarify public information category as soon as possible, improve information examination and supervision, explore civic participation channels, and establish feedback system as well.This thesis consists of seven chapters. The first chapter introduces the overall idea and research content, defining that this thesis only focuses on urban governance area. The second chapter reviews domestic and international past research achievements on urban governance, civic participation and policy confidentiality and information publicity. The third chapter explains the theoretical basis of this research, which is multi-centers governance theory, public involvement theory, right to know theory, and related theory about policy confidentiality. This chapter also constructs a frame to help governance define whether the information should be open or confidential. The forth chapter introduces the policy of controlling total quantity of cars in Hangzhou. including the policy background, making process, implementation and feedback. The fifth chapter deeply analyzes the case from the angle of policy confidentiality and information publicity, pointing out the dilemmas and reasons. The sixth chapter raises institutional suggestions regarding to those reasons, mainly on government information publicity and civic participation. The last chapter is an conclusion of the whole thesis and an outlook for the future of citizen participating in urban governance in China.