权威调控与知识生产:中国政策试验的双重逻辑——基于能源领域四项试点的案例比较

Authority Regulation and Knowledge Production:The Dual Logic of China’s Policy Experiment——Case Comparison Based on Four Pilot Projects in the Field of Energy

政策试验既是国家实现治理目标的政治行动,也是知识生产的科学过程。已有文献较少剖析政策试验中政治和科学两种逻辑的具体运作。本文构建了“权威调控-知识生产”分析框架,区分政策试验的四种模式:指令-破冰、倡议-示范、授权-择优、扶持-助推。并选择能源领域的四项试点开展案例研究。研究发现,权威调控与知识生产是政策试验的两种主导逻辑,当议题的战略性较高时,中央通过试点指令、专项督察强化调控,也会通过观望成效、延时推广弱化对其他试点的调控。当技术路线清晰时,政策试验遵循“试对”路径,通过自我对照得出结论;反之,决策者应用“试错”方式触发知识生产,在横向比较、因果推断的基础上研判趋势。在权威调控下,政策试验形成了检验型、进化型、纠偏型、靶向型四种知识生产机制。提升试验的有效性,需要发挥政治权威在推动试点产出中的优势,也要避免政治信号弱化后试点难推广的问题;适当提升“试错”在政策试验中的比重,增加代表性地区的数量充实对照组,更充分地发现偏误,精准识别试点绩效。

Policy experiment is both a scientific process of knowledge production and a political action for the country to achieve governance goal.This paper constructs the analytical framework of “authority regulation and knowledge production”,and clarifies four modes of policy experiment.Then,it selects four pilot projects in the field of energy for case studies.The study finds that authority regulation and knowledge production are the two dominant types of logic of policy experiments.When policy issues are highly related to national strategies,the central government will strengthen regulation through pilot instructions and special inspection.On the contrary,the central government will weaken the regulation for other pilot projects through waiting for results and delaying promotion.When the technical route is clear,the policy experiment follows the “trial-and-right” strategy and draws a conclusion through self-comparison;otherwise,decision makers would apply “trial-and-error” approach to trigger knowledge production,and judge the trend based on horizontal comparison,repeated verification and causal inference.Under the control of authority,policy experiments have formed four knowledge production mechanisms:inspection,evolution,correction and targeting.To improve the effectiveness of the experiment,it is necessary to give full play to the superiority of political authority,and avoid the problem of difficult promotion of the pilot project after the political signal is weakened;it is also necessary to appropriately increase the proportion of “trial-and-error” in the policy experiment,increase the number of representative areas to enrich the control group,thoroughly discover biased errors and accurately identify the performance of pilot project.