公共协商的政治合法性功能--基于连氏市民公共服务满意度调查

The Political Legitimation of Public Deliberation:Evidence from the Lien Citizen Public Service Satisfaction Survey

西方协商民主理论中,协商民主具有政治合法性功能。协商民主实践在中国地方政府方兴未艾,然而少有研究运用调查数据探讨地方政府采用协商民主的政治合法性动机。本文认为,中国地方政府同样出于维护政策合法性与政治信任的考虑推动不同形式的协商民主实践。本文基于2013年针对全国36个主要城市的连氏市民调查数据,通过大样本数据分析,检验了市民的公共协商感知对其政治认同的影响。研究发现公共协商感知显著提高了市民的政治满意度、政府清廉度感知和公共服务满意度,这一发现表明政府征求公众意见这一公共协商实践的确可以起到改善公众政治认同感的作用。我们还进一步检验了教育程度和党员身份对公民公共协商感知与政治态度关系的调节作用,结果不仅表明教育程度增强了公共协商感知对公民政治认同的积极作用,还发现党员身份的调节作用并不存在。最后,本文还发现了公共协商对公民政治信任"消极"影响的作用机制,公众的公共协商态度显著降低了公共服务满意度和政治清廉度感知对政治信任的积极作用。

A western theory of deliberative democracy often assumes that deliberative democracy has the function of political legitimisation. This, however, needs to be tested empirically. Despite burgeoning local deliberative democracy practices in China, few empirical studies based on survey data have focused on the political legitimating function of, and/or incentives for Chinese local government deliberative democracy practices. This paper aims to fill this gap by demonstrating that the desire to promote political trust and political legitimation is one incentive for Chinese local government adoption of various forms of deliberative democracy. Using data from the Lien citizen survey in 36 Chinese cities, and conducting statistical analysis using this large data set, this paper examines the effect of public deliberation perceptions on citizens' political attitudes. The study finds that public deliberation perceptions are positively related to citizens 'political trust, evaluations of government performance, and public service satisfaction. It also finds that public consultation actually improves the citizens' political trust in government. This paper also examines the moderate effect of education and CCP membership on the relation between public deliberation perceptions and political trust. The results suggest that education levels increase the positive effect of public deliberation perceptions on political trust, but CCP membership seems to have no significant effect. Finally, this paper identifies a side effect of public deliberation on political trust. It finds that public deliberation perceptions undermine the positive impacts of public service satisfaction and governmental corruption evaluations, which in turn affect levels of political trust.