中国经济腾飞中的分级制政策试验

Policy Experimentation in China's Economic Rise

政策试验是指把来自基层的建议和地方积累的经验注入国家政策的一种机制,这常被视为促进制度创新的有力手段和避免因情况不明而导致改革震荡的有效方法。在某些经济领域内,大规模的试验有效地刺激了政策学习和经济扩张,原因是政治精英们从支持新型的私营和跨国企业中获益。与此相反,在有效提供社会公共产品方面,许多政策试验却不了了之,原因是这些试验要求社会主动监督和中央政府严格执法相结合,否则试验发挥不了作用。尽管在不同政治领域内转型试验效果不一,中国以试验为基础的政策制定过程还是对重新定义整个政策框架起到了实质作用。在中国式政策制定过程的核心,我们发现了一个中央和地方互动的机制,我们称其为"分级制试验",这个发现对经济转型方式的研究是一个明显补充。

Policy experimentation is frequently highlighted as a potent means to facilitate institutional innovation, and avoid reformist leaps in the dark by injecting bottom-up initiative and local knowledge into the national policy process. Large-scale experimentation stimulated policy learning and economic expansion effectively in those sectors in which political elites could benefit from supporting new types of private and transnational entrepreneurial activity. Conversely, experimental programs largely failed in generating an effective provision of social goods which would require a combination of active societal supervision and strict central government enforcement to make it work. Though the impact of reform experiments varies between policy domains, China＇s experimentationbased policy process has been essential to redefining basic policy parameters. At the heart of this process, we find a pattern of central-local interaction in generating policy-＂experimentation under hierarchy＂-which constitutes a notable addition to the repertoires of governance that have been tried for achieving economic transformation.