Exploration On The Realization Path Of Digitally Empowered Food Safety Collaborative Governance

Food safety is undergoing a new revolution from traditional "management" to "governance".There are two major changes worthy of attention:first,the diversification of the participants in governance,and second,the continuous improvement of the coordination mechanism between the participants.There have been systematic studies on the necessity of multi-subject participation in the academic circle,but there is not enough research on the mechanism of collaborative governance.Since 2015,Fuyang District has explored a digital enabling collaborative governance path.This paper takes Fuyang District of Hangzhou City as evidence to discuss related issues.This paper first reviews the current research results of food safety governance and mainstream theories of policy changes,and finds that most scholars pay more attention to the effectiveness and rationality of collaborative food safety governance and digital governance,and there are insufficient empirical studies on the implementation mechanism of collaborative governance,especially "how digitalization plays its role".Based on mainstream theories such as bureaucracy,collaborative governance and digital governance,and starting from the three core factors of institutional power,technical ability and cooperation impetus of food safety governance,this paper builds an analysis framework.The framework above is used to analyze the three take-out governance stages of single-core management,multi-party participation,and then digital enabling collaborative governance that Fuyang District has experienced since 2015,as well as the main characteristics of the changes in institutional power,technical ability and cooperation impetus.The different stages are compared with the three governance modes of hierarchical management,collaborative governance and digital governance to locate the respective positions of the three stages.This local practical experience shows that digital reform is conducive to further breaking through the barriers of traditional bureaucratic management and improving the level of collaborative governance.Moreover,current local practices are gradually evolving towards a model of digital governance.In order to further explain the internal logic behind the experience,this paper further analyzed and studied how to realize the mechanism of digital empowered food safety collaborative governance in Fuyang District.It is found that this region has established a series of collaborative mechanisms based on digital platforms,including decentralization restriction mechanism,responsibility division realization mechanism,data sharing mechanism,digital negotiation mechanism,closed-loop disposal mechanism,trust mechanism based on information disclosure and rights and interests protection,etc.,playing a key role in the three dimensions of institutional power,technical ability and cooperation impetus.Based on the case study,this paper further argues that the current efforts should be made to solve the remaining problems.These problems mainly include:the path of all parties’ participation in governance is not perfect,the main body coordination mechanism is not perfect,and the effectiveness of digital application is insufficient.Based on the experience of food safety governance in Fuyang District,this paper puts forward suggestions for policy optimization from the three perspectives of establishing and improving the "credit empowerment mechanism","digital negotiation mechanism" and "digital application mechanism" in the process of food safety governance further towards digital governance,from the aspects of how to empower,divide labor and cooperate,and how to give full play to the effectiveness of digital means.