Research On Grassroots Legislative Contact Points Of Shanghai Municipal People’s Congress Standing Committee Participating In Legislative Practice

The report of the 20 th National Congress of the Communist Party of China points out that developing people’s democracy throughout the process and ensuring that the people are the masters of the country.Building a good legislative contact point at the grassroots level is an inevitable requirement for improving the working mechanism for absorbing public opinion and pooling the wisdom of the people.It is an institutional guarantee for strengthening the people’s ownership of the country.It is an important democratic practice to broaden democratic channels,develop socialist democratic politics,and better reflect the aspirations of the people and protect their rights and interests in various systems and national governance.The grassroots legislative contact point system began at the Fourth Plenary Session of the 18 th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.It is a product of the entire process of people’s democracy in the new era,an internal innovation of the people’s congress system,and embodies the principles of democratic legislation;Article 2 of the Constitution,the Legislative Law,the Organic Law of the National People’s Congress and the Local Organic Law,and local regulations of Shanghai provide a normative basis for it;Local advance exploration,the diffusion of formal national systems,and the deepening and expansion of functions provide a rich practical basis for it.As the first place to propose "full process democracy",in order to improve the public opinion expression platform and carrier of the People’s Congress,and ensure that people’s ownership of the country is concretely and realistically implemented in national political and social life,the Standing Committee of the Shanghai Municipal People’s Congress has established a grassroots legislative contact point system.This article,taking Shanghai as an example,studies the participation of grassroots legislative contact points in local legislative consultation from four perspectives:subject,procedure,content,and results.First of all,from the perspective of the main body of participation in legislation,the development units have made some achievements in collecting public opinions,professional ability and highlighting characteristics,but there are problems such as insufficient participation ability,biased positioning,and decreased enthusiasm;Absorbing grassroots people,units and organizations,as well as experts and scholars to participate in legislation reflects grassroots public opinion,realizes organizational participation,and improves the quality of legislation,but also shows problems such as low participation,small scope,and elitism.Secondly,from the perspective of participation in the legislative process,the contact point system is embedded in the legislative preparation stage and the bill to law stage,with the deliberation link as the core of participation.However,there are problems such as insufficient voice in the preparation of legislative plans and limited participation in the drafting link.Thirdly,from the perspective of the content of participation in legislation,the participants put forward legislative proposals involving both substantive rights and obligations and legislative technical norms through the contact point channel.The substantive rights and obligations proposals are greatly affected by legislative facts,and the legislative technical norms proposals are highly professional and highly dependent on legislative experts.Finally,from the perspective of participating in the legislative results,it shows that the procedures for handling legislative proposals are unscientific,the public opinion response is insufficient,and the operation is difficult.The results of handling legislative proposals also show a variety of influencing factors for adoption,polarization of quality and other issues.Therefore,this paper puts forward corresponding improvement suggestions from the above four perspectives.First,strengthen the capacity of contact point establishment units,accurately position the functions and characteristics of each unit’s participation in legislation,cultivate the grassroots people’s ability to participate in legislation against the participants,broaden the scope of participation subjects and regulations of grassroots unit organizations,return experts and scholars to the role of legislative aids and legislative technology specification participants,ensure the dominant position of public participation,and avoid being too elitist;Second,strengthen the public’s voice in the preparation of legislative plans through grassroots legislative contact points,and expand the scope of participation in the drafting process;Third,we should strengthen the clarity and integrity of the content of legislative proposals,strengthen the demonstration of legislative facts,take improving the quality of legislative proposals as the goal,and avoid quantitative theory;Fourth,improve the existing adoption procedures and standards,establish a fair and reasonable evaluation mechanism and a feedback mechanism for legislative suggestions,and ensure the scientific evaluation of the effectiveness of participating in legislative consultation and the maintenance of the enthusiasm and enthusiasm of the public in participating in legislation from the institutional level.