政治过程、交易成本与治理机制——政策制定过程的交易成本分析理论

政策制定过程是一个真实时间中的政治过程。由于政治交易各方的信息不对称、机会主义和资产专用性,政策制定过程存在大量交易成本。借助于经济分析的交易成本理论,建构出政策制定过程交易成本分析的基本框架,厘清政治过程交易成本的构成与节约交易成本的治理机制,可以为理解政策制定提供一个新的、合理的解释窗口,提供政策过程微观政治分析的可能,从而为节约交易成本,改善政策制定提供依据。无论是对现有政策的评价、不同政策的规范化评估或是替代政策的推荐等,都必须认识到制定政策面临各种交易成本的约束,这些交易成本影响了政策制定的效率,使政策制定不只是一个技术问题或计算问题,而是许多试图影响政策制定者(代理者)行为的参与者(委托者)之间的一种政治博弈,政策是政治博弈均衡的结果。

Political Process,Transaction Cost and Governance Mechanism: Analysis of the Transaction Cost in the Process of Policy Making

The process of policy making,a political process in reality,is abundant with transaction cost because of the information asymmetry,opportunism and asset specificity among parties of political transaction.Transaction cost theory of economic analysis can be helpful to the development of the framework for analyzing the transaction cost in the process,to the differentiation of the formation of transaction cost of the process and decreasing it,to the understanding of policy making and to the possibility of micro-analysis of the politics.The reason lies in the fact that one must realize that policy making is restricted by many kinds of transaction costs whenever he or she wants to evaluate current policy,normatively appraise different policies or recommend alternative policy,and so on.Such transaction costs can affect the efficiency of policy making and,in the end,policy making is more like a political game among participants(principals) who try to influence the activities of policy makers(agents) than a technical or calculating problem.Policy is the result of the equilibrium of political game.