221 / 2022-02-15 11:42:12

Public Opinion-based Governance: A New Perspective on Understanding the Corrective Approach of China's Epidemic Prevention Policy

policy implementation deviations,opinion-based governance,cascading

Public Security and Emergency Management > 1. Urban Security and Public Governance

On the eve of the Spring Festival, the local government's “cascading” epidemic prevention policies have made people “sad for the New Year”. In order to avoid the implementation deviations caused by the flexible implementation of epidemic prevention policies, China has adopted a new and effective approach which is different from the previous hierarchical governance——public opinion-based governance, i.e., changing from institutionalism with hierarchical procedural textual communication to public opinionism with open-ended media textual interaction, and building a communication channel between the central government, local communities and people in their hometowns that can be used in the double-layered space of reality and fiction to force policy implementers to take the initiative to correct deviations. The study finds that the implementation of epidemic prevention policies is marked by elite domination, pressure accumulation, imbalanced feedback, and generalized accountability, and the government's governance capacity is diminished. Based on the real situation, this paper adopts a case study approach to comprehensively explore and propose a “public opinion-based policy correction process model”, and gives feasible suggestions to strengthen the construction of a networked administrative culture of local governments, implement effective feedback of public opinion, and establish a flexible accountability mechanism in light of the deviations in real policy practice so as to improve the epidemic prevention policy. This will provide a possible reference for improving the setting and implementation of epidemic prevention policies.