Beyond Ambiguous Consensus:A Study of the"Limited Scope and Mutual Embedding"Decision-Making Process
The vast scope of national governance and the strong external pressure of the internet era determine that China's policy process presents the characteristics of"Ambiguous consensus+Deliberative implementation",which makes policies exhibit"high ambiguity and high conflict"attributes when encountering wicked problems,and increases the difficulty of implementation and the risk of policy failure.Most studies on policy implementation treat policy attributes as exogenous variables,overlooking the influence of policy issues and the decision-making process on policy attributes.This paper integrates the discourse on wicked problems and the decision-making process,and draws upon policy design theory to analyze the decision-making processes of the healthcare policies.It is found that the inherently wicked nature of the policy issue determines that policy ambiguity and conflict are unavoidable but can be mitigated through the decision-making process.Through iterative experiences and reflective learning,decision-making bodies can optimize the distribution of decision-making authority and the selection of policy instruments.By limiting the scope of policies,the information asymmetry between governments and society can be alleviated;by mutual embedding among relevant policies the cost-benefit asymmetry between different social entities can be alleviated.Therefore the"limited scope and mutual embedding"decision-making process can significantly reduce the ambiguity and conflict of policies,thereby affecting the difficulty of policy implementation and even the final policy result.In short,over multiple cycles of decision-making and implementation,the decision-making process may evolve from the"ambiguous consensus"mode to the"limited scope and mutual embedding"mode.This paper provides some empirical evidences for studying wicked problems from the perspective of decision-making process,and also offers a new perspective for understanding policy failures.
policy failureambiguous consensuslimited scope and mutual embeddingpolicy designdecision-making process
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