政策试验网络何以有效运转?——以城市生活垃圾分类政策为例

How does the Policy Experiment Network work? Taking the Classification Policies of Urban Household Waste as An Example

政策试验是理解中国创新改制与渐进发展的重要制度窗口。既有研究多局限于央地视角下政策试验的发生机制与组织模式,较少关注政策主体间的关系互动对政策结果的影响。基于政策网络理论,文章构建出“三轮六轨”制的府际网络框架,区分了中央政府、试点地区与非试点地区上位协调、示范引领与对标竞争的行动者角色,并对城市生活垃圾分类政策变迁的因果机制进行分析。研究发现,政策主体在试点的不同阶段采取差异化的行动策略来应对任务情势的变化,使得网络结构特征与政策结果相互调适。在政策试验的府际网络中,试点任务通过层层分解纵向下达给基层单位,试点地区与非试点地区以评比表彰为创新竞争的驱动力展开任务竞逐,中央则根据试验成效以强弱不同的政治势能来修正政策执行偏差。本文的边际贡献在于不仅拓展了双轨制政策试验的理论框架,丰富了网络治理视域下政府间行为互动的解释机制,也为理解中国公共政策体系的演进与发展提供了新的思路与方向。

Policy experimentation is an important institutional window for understanding China's innovative restructuring and gradual development. Existing research is mostly limited to the occurrence mechanism and organizational model of policy experiments from the perspective of central-local governments, and pays less attention paid to the impact of the relationship interaction between policy subjects on policy outcomes. Based on the Policy Network Theory, this article constructs an intergovernmental network framework of “three rounds and six tracks” system, distinguishing the roles of actors in central government, pilot areas and non-pilot areas in coordination, demonstration and benchmarking competition, and analyzing the causal mechanism of changes in urban household waste classification policies. The research has found that policy entities adopt differentiated action strategies at different stages of the pilot project to respond to changes in task situations, resulting in mutual adaptation of network structure characteristics and policy outcomes. In the intergovernmental network of policy experiments, pilot tasks are vertically distributed to grassroots units through hierarchical decomposition. Pilot areas and non pilot areas compete for tasks based on evaluation and recognition as the driving force for innovation competition. The central government corrects policy execution deviations based on the effectiveness of the experiment and the political potential of different strengths and weaknesses. The marginal contribution of this article lies in not only expanding the theoretical framework of the dual track policy experiment, enriching the explanatory mechanism of intergovernmental behavior interaction in the perspective of network governance, but also providing new ideas and directions for understanding the evolution and development of China's public policy system.