Research On Outsourcing Service Of Public Participation In Urban And Rural Planning

Through establishing a system for evaluating the public participating in urban and rural planning and scoring the states of the public participation in sample cities across the country, this paper has concluded through analyzing problems existing in Chinese public participating in urban and rural planning. In general, the problems include: unsound information disclosure system, poor public participation ability and learning ability, a lack of systematization of public benefits, etc. Through analyzing the above problems, this paper has attributed them to three reasons. First, the management process of urban and rural planning is under the charge of governmental departments and the “oneness” of administrative entity has led to the situation that the government acts as both judge and athlete. Second, the public participation system remains unsound and only some rough provisions are existent in some laws and regulations; such generalized provisions can not directly guide planning management effectively. Third, there is a severe shortage of organization mechanism for Chinese public participating in urban and rural planning.From the perspective of systematization of public participation, this paper considers promoting administerization of public participation model to develop towards marketization as an effective way for overcoming the presentation problem of public participation. In specific, the practice is “public participation in urban and rural planning” service outsource model. Here, the operational model is analyzed as:(1) Public participation is a public service required to be provided by the government. Fundamentally, “public participation” has two meanings: first, public participation is a behavior; second, public participation is a democratic system. The two means of “public participation” has presented the relation between process and objective. So far, public participation system has not been developed, and object of research here is public participation behavior. In China, public participation behavior refers to the top-down behavior of government having the public affect administrative legislation, formulate public policies and make decisions on public affairs through opening channels. This paper, while basing on theories of legitimacy of government administration and public goods, has argued the connotation of public participation, considering it as a public service required to be provided by government administration.(2) Public participation, as a kind of public service, can be marketized. Public participation belongs to pure public goods. According to the conditions for effectively supplying pure public goods proposed by Samuelson, public participation service provided by the government may become invalid and introducing in a market mechanism can yet be regarded as a feasible approach of reform. Feasibility of marketization of public participation service can be analyzed from four aspects: contracting of government functions, reshaping of public participation behavior chain, case analysis and prospect estimation.(3) The marketization of “public participating in urban and rural planning” service can be achieved in the form of outsourcing. First, view public participation as a public service. Hence, it is necessary to distinguish among concepts of three basic participants in the public service system, that is, consumer, producer and provider. In the process of public participating in operation, the government can organize the participation by itself or in the form of marketization. Consumers of public participation service are the public, the service provider is the government, and the producer of service can be either government or various production bodies like social organizations and enterprises. When analyzing with transaction cost theory in neoinstitutional economics, author of this paper concludes that the transaction cost for separating the provider and producer of public participation service is lower than internal organization cost for unifying the provider and producer. Therefore, outsourcing is more appropriate for the marketization of public participation service.Finally, construct the outsourcing model of public participating in urban and rural planning from aspects of organization and procedure. Divide outsourcing organizations of public participating in urban and rural planning into two categories: planning compilation institutions and non-planning compilation institutions. Compared with planning compilation institutions, non-planning compilation institutions are easier to be supervised. Moreover, the government, planning compilation institutions and public participation institutions can coordinate and restrict each other. In the light of that, non-planning compilation institutions are more appropriate for the outsourcing of public participation. In terms of procedure, divide the construction of the outsourcing model of public participating in urban and rural planning into four stages: early planning, compilation, examination and approval, and implementation.