Procedure is an inflexible restraining mechanism to ensure a transparent, open, multidimensional, participating and negotiating decision-making process. Through the development of procedure we can push forward the transformation of the public decision-making process from a single, isolated, leader-centered “monodrama” to a transparent, open, multidimensional, participating, negotiating “debate competition”.

In recent years, decisions or momentous engineering projects have come to a premature end immediately after being introduced in different areas, such as the circuit-breaker mechanism in the stock market, zero down payment loans for college students to buy homes, allocation of higher education resources in different areas, grassland heavenly road toll collection, NIMBY projects like garbage incinerators, PX projects, etc. The premature failure of these decisions has seriously damaged the credibility of the government, and increased the difficulty of public decision-making. In order to solve the predicament of decision-making, we cannot just be concerned with correcting the textual mistakes of the decisions, but we should make a deep analysis of how these decisions are made and make a reflection on the reform of the decision-making system. Only by the transformation from struggle afterwards to participation in advance can we possibly avoid the predicament of decision-making as a zero-sum game.

The key to pushing forward the reform of decision-making system is promoting the development of the procedure of important public decision-making. Procedure is an inflexible restraining mechanism to ensure a transparent, open, multidimensional, participating and negotiating decision-making process. Through the development of procedure we can push forward the transformation of the public decision-making process from a single, isolated, leader-centered “monodrama” to a transparent, open, multidimensional, participating, negotiating “debate competition”. In the monodrama-like decision-making, party and government leaders lead the policy-making process, leaders’ preference is transformed to decision-making schemes, and information is isolated and flows in a single direction. However, in the debate-competition-like decision-making, information is open and transparent, flowing in different directions, citizens virtually participate in the process, and multidimensional interests are negotiated, discussed and debated. The policy-making process is a debate among various parties, and the role of party and government leaders is to choose the decision-making scheme that has the strongest grounds. Since 2010 when the State Council made the requirement of “public participation, expert judgment, risk assessment, legality review and group discussion decision-making” on the law-based government administration, the framework and the experimental work of establishing rules for important decision-making procedure have made considerable progress. However, we need to strengthen the transformation route in order to continuously push forward the development of public decision-making procedure.

Virtual Public Participation

Since the late 1980s when public hearing was introduced in administrative penalty, public participation has made significant progress. In decision-making areas such as urban and rural planning, environmental impact assessment, price adjustment, etc., there are rules and regulations about public participation. But in practice, sometimes public participation is just a formality, without any actual effect on decision-making process and outcomes. The reason is that there is no in-depth research into public participation. Some areas or decision-making departments equal participation to “attendance”, interpreting public participation as the public being present or filling in questionnaires.

There are multiple levels of participation. The lowest level is getting the public informed, that is, making information open and transparent, which is the basic type of participation. The second level is to ask the public for advice and get to know the interests, needs and preferences of the public or the stakeholders. The third level is negotiation and game; that is, the public has the right to negotiate over the decisions and the ability of interest game, and especially there should be room for negotiation over some public decisions about interest adjustment. The fourth level is consultation and cooperation. The result of negotiation is the formation of consultation mechanism between all parties, and the purpose of consultation is to achieve cooperation. Multilevel consultation among various parties is a high level of participation. The fifth level is agreement, the highest level of participation. The public power is authorized to the public and the public leads the decision-making schemes. The selection criterion is to choose an effective type of participation according to the decision-making area and the participating target.

Independent Judgment of Experts and Think Tanks According to Scientific Criteria

In modern society, social division of labor is highly specialized. In highly specialized areas, the public decision-making depends on scientific knowledge for the design, choice and judgment of decision-making schemes. Experts and think tanks are the representatives of scientific knowledge in public decision-making. In the fields of natural science and engineering, experts and think tanks can provide intellectual support for public decision-making with testable knowledge, while in the fields of social science, the independence of experts and think tanks is even more important. Although their standpoints, knowledge and judgment are controversial, it is the controversy that characterizes the decision-making process as a debate competition. The experts and think tanks in social science participate in open discussion and offer grounds for decision-making schemes, which helps to improve the quality of decisions. Some important public decisions have failed for lack of an open debate.

Improvement of the Quality of Risk Assessment

Public decision-making may bring about some unexpected results, that is, possible risks come to reality. The monodrama-like public decision-making is highly risky because it is restricted to the decision-makers’ cognition, ability to collect and handle information, and experience and knowledge. Assessment is a basic feature of modern public administration, for we need to make risk assessment in advance, make implementation assessment in process, and make performance assessment afterwards. There are different types of risk, including economic risk, ecological risk, social and stability risk. The methods, tools and complexity of assessment are totally different for different types of risk, among which the social stability risk assessment is the most complicated. Broadly speaking, social stability risk assessment is an assessment of the effect of public decisions on social order, so it is social risk assessment in this sense; in a narrow sense, social stability risk assessment is an assessment of the effect of public decisions on social community affairs.

The revolutionary breakthrough of modern information and technology has completely changed the information dissemination and the climate of opinion in the public decision-making process, so the monodrama-like public decision-making is faced with unprecedented challenges, with the failed decisions being the typical examples. The targets of social risk assessment are communities, especially communities directly or indirectly affected by public decisions. The essence of public decision-making is distribution of authoritative values and interests, bound to lead to an uneven distribution of decision-making costs, profits and risk among different communities or social classes so as to result in fluctuation in the social system and harm the social order.

Social risk consists of structural rick and dynamic risk. Structural risk results from the uneven distribution of public decision-making costs and profits among different communities, while dynamic risk is brought about by communities’ knowledge of structural risk. Dynamic risk means the risk that is low at the beginning and may be increased enormously under the influence of the mechanism of information and public opinions. The dynamic development of social risk often exceeds the cognitive ability of decision-makers. Along with the advancement of risk assessment, it is especially important to improve the quality of assessment. High-level assessment report should be an important standard to affect the decision-making schemes.

Legality Review as a Threshold of Public Decision-making

Legality review is an important mechanism to ensure law-based decision-making. The authorization of laws should be the basis of the list of powers. Decision-making against the law often appears in the public decision-making process for lack of a clear-cut accountability system. For example, there is still no effective accountability mechanism for abstract administrative behaviors. “Encaging powers” calls for a clear definition of powers and the way to exercise powers; and more importantly, how can we stop the acts exceeding the power? The list of power should go hand in hand with the list of responsibilities. Therefore, legality review acts against illegal public decision-making and it should be the threshold of public decision-making. Once a decision-making is launched, the first thing is to make a legality review and then it is possible to carry out other procedures and processes.

Giving Full Play to the Advantages of Democratic Centralism

Decision-making based on group discussion is the reflection of the advantage of democratic centralism. In the political system of China, all the important public decision-making is carried out through meetings, a decision-making method of democratic centralism. In terms of system design principles, democratic centralism can overcome the shortcomings of making a decision without deliberation or making deliberation without a decision; however, in practice, sometimes it becomes major leaders’ monologue performance, which easily leads to premature failure of the decisions. Giving full play to the advantage of democratic centralism is to enhance inner-party democracy.

Establishing rules for important decision-making procedure may bring about a longer decision-making period, more discussion of decision-making schemes, more participating parties and larger room for interest articulation, which enable the public decision-making process to carry the features of a debate competition. In monodrama-like public decision-making, the decision is made fast, but the implementation is slow, risk is high, and even it is possible to stop or overthrow previous decisions, while in debate-competition-like public decision-making, the decision is made slowly, but the implementation is fast, the risk is low, and it can also lead to high government credibility.

Note: This article originally appeared in Study Times on the following website https://dzb.studytimes.cn/shtml/xxsb/20160801/21158.shtml