Research Centers: Impact On The Coordination Problem

Information Effects

The research centers altered the information flow to the leadership in ways that facilitated coordination. They created new information on policy externalities and trade-offs by bringing together agencies with different functional responsibilities, as well as extrabureaucratic experts, for discussion of policy problems and solutions, so that information on trade-offs and complementarities emerged from their discussion. They also pooled functionally specific information collected separately within ministries, integrated it, and communicated it to the leadership. To a far more limited extent, the centers also used their own staffs to perform policy analysis, adopting a cross-departmental perspective.

A meeting convened jointly by the Technical Economic Research Center and the Shanxi provincial government in 1982 to discuss development of Shanxi's energy resources provides an example of this information-

[26] Ma Hong's description of the TERC indicates this; he called it a research consulting organ under State Council leadership, not an administrative organ (like the SPC), and said that it had no formal administrative power. Ma Hong, "Kaizhuang jishu jingji yanjiu, wei 'sihua' jianshe fuwu," in Kaizhuang shehui kexue yanjiude xin jumian , 204–5.

generating function. The meeting brought together specialists from fourteen different units and discussed questions relating to management and coordination between government levels, the relationship between new and existing mines, problems of transportation, pricing, pollution, and so on. The TERC also held a similar meeting in March 1982 to discuss the feasibility of transporting coal by means of pipelines. This meeting brought together representatives of the SPC, the State Economic Commission (SEC), State Capital Construction Commission, the SSTC, the ministries of Coal, Petroleum, Railroads, Water and Electricity, Machinery, Metallurgy, the CASS, universities, and mines.^[27] In March 1985 the Price Research Center organized a meeting to discuss "questions concerning the influence of sociopsychological factors upon reform of the price system"; it included researchers in psychology, sociology, politics, and economics, as well as some economic bureaucrats.^[28] Meetings of this type provided a forum for interagency discussion, for the pooling of relevant information and expertise, and for consideration of policy decisions in a multidimensional and cross-disciplinary fashion. In this way they helped develop the information base needed for policy coordination, supplying a type of information not available before the Cultural Revolution when bureaucratic research bodies were essentially all functionally specialized.

Who decided, and on what basis, which agencies and types of expertise to include in such meetings is obviously crucial, as these decisions determined to a large extent which types of policy externalities were considered. Such decisions appeared to be left to the discretion of the centers, not determined by higher-level officials. Officials of the ETSDRC stated that when the State Council assigned the center a policy study, if it was a small question, they would sometimes decide simply to utilize their own staff (which consisted of a mixture of scientists, engineers, and economists), but if it was a larger issue, they would convene a conference of relevant specialists from different units. The CIS went through a two-stage process in undertaking a policy study. The director, Huan Xiang, would first ask a staff member to organize the necessary experts. After discussion with relevant specialists, a preliminary working agenda would be drawn up listing the types of experts needed for the study. This then went to Huan for his approval. For particularly important matters, such as the drafting of the section on international affairs for the premier's National People's Congress (NPC) work report, Huan personally selected the relevant experts. The factors determining the types of agencies and experts included in a study need to be further explored; however, it is clear that one important factor was the center's ability to gain the cooperation of

[27] Jingjixue Zhoubao , 19 April 1982, 1.

[28] Jingji Ribao , 15 March 1985, 1, in FBIS , 21 March 1985, K18.

different units. This aspect of the centers' work will be further explored in the next section.

Apart from generating information on policy trade-offs and complementarities relevant to particular projects or decisions, the centers also supplied new information through their role in organizing and conducting long-term planning studies. This was a formal part of the mandate of the ETSDRC (before that, of the TERC), and an important aspect of the NRCSTD's work. These long-term planning and forecasting studies served in part to add a ten- or twenty-year perspective on future developments and needs in the economy, science and technology, foreign affairs, and other areas to complement the more short-term focus of the planning commissions (the SPC focused on five-year, and the SEC on annual, planning until the two were combined in June 1988) and ministries. More important for the focus of this chapter, these studies were conducted in a manner that contributed to policy coordination by drawing in different types of experts and explicitly seeking a comprehensive perspective on the costs and benefits of different policies.

One such long-term planning effort was a thirteen-volume report on "China to the Year 2000" produced over a three-year period under the overall supervision of the TERC (later the ETSDRC). The TERC was able to draw in a much broader range of specialists than would a similar effort by the SPC, including hundreds of specialists who were members of the professional associations that form the China Association of Science and Technology.^[29] Ma Hong, the director of the TERC, headed a research leadership group composed of representatives of the SPC, the SEC, the SSTC, the CASS, as well as the TERC. This group then allocated specific parts of the report to particular units: the S & T one to the SSTC; the report on the international situation to the CASS Institute of World Economics and Politics; the transportation one to the SEC and the Ministry of Railways. This allocation obviously made it possible for the study to be carried out in a functionally specialized way that took little account of policy externalities; this tendency was noted and criticized at an early symposium on the study, held in August 1983.^[30] However, by drawing in a large number of units and specialists, it was also possible to produce a more multidimensional analysis than would normally be undertaken.

[29] This was the reason given by Ma Hong in explaining why he rejected the argument of "some comrades" that the organization of the study of "China to the Year 2000" should be the responsibility of the SPC. Although Ma obviously had other reasons for wanting to keep control of this effort under the auspices of his own TERC rather than the SPC, his assessment of the consequences seems accurate. See Ma Hong, "Kaizhan '2000 niande Zhongguo' de yanjiu," in Kaizhuang shehui kexue yanjiude xin jumian , 117.

[30] Xinhua , 31 August 1983, in JPRS , no. 84374, 21 September 1983, Economic Affairs, no. 384, 71.

A second such long-term planning effort, organized by the NRCSTD, was undertaken jointly by the SPC, the SEC, and the SSTC in 1983, and resulted in the issuing in 1986 of a "white paper" on general S & T policy, and twelve "blue papers" on specialized areas of technical policy. Descriptions of this planning effort emphasize that it involved a new approach, particularly in the manner in which it integrated scientific and economic planning. The process went as follows: First, the planning bureau of the SSTC suggested some preliminary research items, which were discussed by the three commissions. Nine general areas were selected, and after discussions with relevant departments, were allocated in the form of about fifty individual research questions to those departments. Each department then organized S & T and economics specialists to carry out the research and suggest appropriate technical policies. Following this, the three commissions held conferences to discuss technical policy in each of the nine areas and produce draft documents, and they "repeatedly did overall balance work." Following these meetings, the three commissions jointly drafted the documents, sought relevant opinions, revised them, and submitted them to the State Council for approval.^[31] The NRCSTD played a large role in this process: helping to organize the studies, chairing the working groups, and overseeing the compiling and publication of the final documents.^[32] While perhaps not essential for such a major research and planning effort, the existence of the NRCSTD at least greatly facilitated it.

This planning effort promoted coordination in several ways. First, the very fact of cooperation between the three commissions was pointed to as an innovation.^[33] Second, the many meetings held during the research process, like the TERC meetings on project evaluation and policy issues, brought together diverse groups of specialists for discussion of technical issues from scientific, economic, and other points of view, thereby generating new information on policy externalities. Third, the more long-term planning perspective meant that aspects of a problem that might be fixed in the short run, and thus be easy to ignore in routine planning, could now be considered. For example, when the SSTC Department of Comprehensive Management worked out a plan for developing Chinese energy to the year 2000, it not only invited specialists to consider the technical aspects of energy planning, but also included many economists from the TERC and Price Research Center to discuss relevant pricing questions. Although the group organizing the study had been told by the

[31] Zheng Qinghan and Xie Chengyan, "Guanyu yanjiu, zhiding, guanchi jishu zhengcide jige wenti," Kexue guanli yanjiu , no. 4 (August 1983), 23.

[32] National Research Center for Science and Technology for Development , 10–11; and personal communication from a participant in the energy study.

[33] Ibid., 21.

State Council that prices could not be changed in the short run, it recognized that this was something that must be done eventually. The longer time horizon of this study made it sensible to consider the pricing aspects of energy and the consequences of altering energy prices. Finally, when the white and blue papers were publicly promulgated in 1986, the newspaper reports emphasized that these authoritative policies both permitted and required coordinated action by different departments and localities, which had not been possible before—that is, that the increased information provided by the planning process had given leadership policies sufficient authority that coordinated implementation of policy was now possible.^[34] From the perspective of those writing the reports, at least, the results of the planning effort had contributed to policy coordination.

The "China to the Year 2000" study organized by the TERC and the technical blueprints organized by the NRCSTD were not the first examples in China of efforts to develop long-term plans for particular sectors while taking account of other related policy considerations. In 1979 the Energy Research Association, under the joint direction of the SSTC, the SPC, and the SEC, began work on a draft "China's Energy Policy Outline Recommendations," which was completed in December 1982. This outline put forward recommendations based on sixteen considerations, including economics, S & T research, education, and environmental policies. However, the establishment of the research centers permitted such efforts to be organized in a more systematic and regular fashion.

Authority Effects

The research centers did not formally alter the structure of authority within the bureaucracy. As staff and not line organs, they had independent authority—to conduct studies, contract with other units, and perform other tasks related to their research mission (such as, in the case of the CIS, to make contact with foreign bodies without going through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs)—but they did not have formal authority over the ministries or commissions; they were of the same bureaucratic rank. Their relations with these horizontally equal units were thus yewu guanxi (professional relations). They could not demand the cooperation

[34] A commentator's article in Renmin Ribao , 3 September 1986, 1, in FBIS , 5 September 1986, K5, emphasized that all departments and localities were required to carry out the policies, and that this was the business not just of S & T personnel, but also of economic workers and the government departments. The article stated that these policies should be carried out in drawing up S & T, economic, and social development plans, carrying out technical transformation, deciding on priority construction plans, and so on. Song Jian, head of the SSTC, argued that coordination among departments, specialties, and trades required correct (i.e., knowledge-based) policies; these blueprints, he suggested, supplied these. Song Jian, "March Towards a New Realm—Preface to 'Guide to China's Science and Technology Policies,'" Renmin Ribao , 10 September 1986, 3, in FBIS , 17 September 1986, K10.

of any other unit; they also could not prevent any ministry from sending its advice directly to the State Council rather than through the research center.

The vertical relationship of the centers with the premier and the State Council differed from their horizontal relationship with the ministries and commissions. Although formally the research centers' authority was equivalent, their informal authority, and the attention paid them by the premier, varied. As many have noted, the personal authority of the director appeared to be a primary source of such variation; this in turn was a function of personal closeness to the premier and general respect of the top leadership. Ma Hong's ETSDRC (and before that the TERC) appeared to be by far the most influential, and the respect that Ma Hong has enjoyed among top leaders for many years is undoubtedly a key reason. The quality of the center's staff appeared to be another source of variation in informal authority; the TERC possessed a young, energetic staff, most of whom had graduated from the CASS graduate school or top universities.

But these intrinsic factors did not wholly determine the impact of the centers. Persuasion and competition were both key to the kind of relationship the centers had with higher officials. The relationship cannot be characterized as one of bargaining; because their authority was essentially derivative of the premier, the centers did not have the resources necessary to bargain with these higher authorities and therefore had to engage in persuasion. The centers' ethos was also not one of bargaining; their personnel repeatedly emphasized that they simply advised the premier and that he could accept or reject their advice. These personnel also recognized that they were competing with other units that might offer the premier more persuasive advice. Accordingly, a better model of the relationship between the centers and the premier (and the State Council generally) is one of "competitive persuasion."^[35] Only when they could

[35] The centers clearly compete with each other and the ministries and commissions for authority and jurisdiction and for the premier's attention and support. One staff member of another center described Ma Hong's TERC as a "hegemon," saying that in addition to incorporating the ERC and Price Research Center, Ma had hoped also to bring the Economic Legislation Center and CIS under his domain. Although this effort failed, the TERC did not appear to have particularly good relations with the CIS: for drafting of the international affairs section of the "China to the Year 2000" report, Ma turned instead to the Institute of World Economics and Politics at CASS. The centers competed not only with each other but also with powerful ministries: Huan Xiang's CIS and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) clearly saw each other as major competitors for policy influence with the premier. Nor were the centers necessarily more influential than the ministries; although Ma Hong's ETSDRC appears to have been very influential relative to the economic ministries (perhaps less so relative to the SPC), the CIS seemed, if anything, less influential than the MFA. More research is needed to establish the exact nature of competition between the centers and the ministries, and the sources of relative influence.

persuade the top leaders to accept their policy recommendations could they actually affect the nature of policy implementation and the behavior of other bureaucratic units.^[36] Thus, to demonstrate their influence on policy outcomes, ETSDRC officials pointed to their ability to get their suggestions formally incorporated into the Seventh Five-Year Plan, and NRCSTD officials pointed to the authoritative promulgation of the white and blue papers.^[37]

However, because the centers possessed limited staff, in order to make their arguments persuasive to higher authorities they had to gain the cooperation of horizontally equal ministries and other units with relevant expertise (although in some cases they were able to draw on foreign expertise).^[38] The resources that the centers possessed to gain the cooperation of researchers in other units varied considerably, and in somewhat circular fashion, varied in part according to the perceived clout of the center. In this set of relationships, bargaining was a more relevant factor.

A key research center resource for gaining the cooperation of the ministries was the fact that the premier and other important leaders were known to pay attention to their reports. Thus, when the centers organized meetings or prepared studies, ministries wanted to participate so that their voices would be heard.^[39] This was particularly true for a study like "China to the Year 2000," which was known to be personally

[36] A possible example of how a research institute was able to affect the behavior of a ministry in a different functional sphere through "competitive persuasion" and not bargaining comes from the MFA's Institute of International Studies. When world oil prices fell, the Institute wrote a report arguing that China should slow her oil production and sent it directly to the premier. Zhao agreed, and ordered the ministry to slow down production. However, as Michel Oksenberg points out (personal communication), confirming that this instance actually fits the model of "competitive persuasion" will require knowledge of the other input into the decision.

[37] Undoubtedly, strategies other than simply providing a compelling argument were used in the competition between advisory bodies for policy influence. For example, a member of the SSTC energy-planning group described how, as a (then) minority voice opposing construction of the Three Gorges Dam, the group was horrified to read in Renmin Ribao that construction was already beginning. In a call to the newspaper, they discovered that this was false information that reporters had "heard from someone." My informant thought it likely that this was a deliberate leak to the newspaper by someone trying to influence the policy outcome. I do not discuss these alternative bureaucratic strategies for gaining policy influence because I lack any meaningful data on them.

[38] In a personal communication, David Zweig indicates that the RDRC drew heavily on the resources of the World Bank in performing some of its studies.

[39] One official of the research institute under the MFA suggested that his institute was very happy to have research tasks allocated by the premier or the State Council office (a relatively rare occurence), because researchers then knew that this was an issue to which the leadership was paying attention, and thus that the chances of having some influence were greater.

sanctioned by Zhao Ziyang. High-level leadership attention was also evident in the technical planning process organized by the NRCSTD; according to a participant in the energy-planning group, when the group organized meetings of different specialists, often a vice-premier would attend and ask questions. Since leadership attention is a scarce resource, the centers' ability to deliver it provided a strong incentive for the ministries to cooperate in their studies.

The importance of perceived influence with the premier for gaining the cooperation of ministries and research bodies is clear from conversations with researchers in different bodies. An official of the NRCSTD specializing in agricultural research said that his center maintained good relations with the Rural Development Research Center, in part because the two centers had similar policy interests, but also because the RDRC had "a great deal of clout." Although I heard no stories of TERC or ETSDRC difficulties in gaining the cooperation of ministries or researchers, the relatively less influential CIS clearly did have such difficulty. Indeed, it appears that the CIS had to struggle to find units willing to cooperate with its studies and had to rely partly on guanxi , or a personal relationship with individuals in those other units.^[40]

Finally, the centers utilized financial resources and exchange of services to gain the support of researchers in other units. Here they clearly came closest to "bargaining" with those units. The CIS provided funds to fifty affiliated researchers to undertake research projects. Likewise, the NRCSTD contracted for studies by other units; its charter provided that it could sign such contracts with foreign as well as domestic entities. Some of those contracts—such as one for a study of sand-sedimentation problems related to the Three Gorges Project—were allocated through a bidding system, in which institutes from CAS and CASS, universities, and the bureaucracy could participate. Financial resources and broad contacts within the bureaucracy and academia apparently could be just as important as guanxi with the leadership, making the NRCSTD a major challenger to the ETSDRC. The NRCSTD had the resources of the SSTC behind it; the SSTC, in cooperation with the SPC, allocated all central-government funding for civilian S & T research. Indeed, when

[40] Originally, the CIS was supposed to rely heavily upon the CASS area studies institutes for research support, but these institutes did not prove very cooperative. Although the MFA shared its documents with the CIS and invited CIS staff to attend its biweekly wuxuhui ("meetings to discuss ideological guidelines," i.e., meetings for internal coordination purposes where policy issues are discussed and debated), it was unwilling to undertake joint research with the center. The CIS came to rely heavily upon the Institute of Contemporary International Relations (ICIR). According to Barnett, the ICIR was responsible to the CIS (implying an authoritative relationship); according to a Chinese source, however, the reason it was so cooperative was that the former director of the ICIR, Chen Zhongjing, was married to a relative of Huan Xiang's.

the CIS wished to carry out a quantitative study, it had to go to the SSTC for funds.^[41] Greater financial and staff resources provided the NRCSTD with another major advantage over some other centers in gaining the cooperation of ministries; it had the ability to undertake consulting work for other agencies. An official of the NRCSTD stated that a desire to have the NRCSTD do research for them was one of the major reasons why the ministries were willing to cooperate in studies organized by the NRCSTD. The ETSDRC, on the other hand, had to turn down requests by other bureaucratic units to undertake studies on their behalf, because it lacked the necessary resources.

In general, then, the research centers' main source of bureaucratic authority was their relationship to the premier and the ability to persuade him and other officials to accept their advice (these two characteristics were related, but not perfectly). To persuade other units to cooperate with them so that they could carry out their studies and try to influence decision making, they offered leadership attention, financial incentives, and exchange of services. They also sometimes made use of guanxi in the pure sense of a direct personal relationship. But these resources, used to "bargain" with other units, only allowed them to conduct their research; they did not permit the centers, independently of State Council authority, to actually alter the behavior of ministries in ways that affected policy implementation.

Although the centers did not formally alter the authority structure of the bureaucracy, they nevertheless did so informally by shifting the balance of information and expertise between the top leadership and the ministries. As was discussed in the section on information effects, they collected information from ministries and other units and transferred it upward; moreover, they generated some limited analysis of their own (more in the case of some centers than others), and could help the leadership integrate and assess the information coming in separately from the ministries. Indirectly, therefore, the centers potentially diminished the fragmentation of authority by decreasing the ministries' relative monopoly of expertise.

However, because expertise had become a more important resource in the Chinese bureaucracy, this shift in relative expertise from lower-level units to the leadership proved unstable. The ministries and commissions subordinate to the State Council had an incentive to try to reverse that shift by enlarging their own sources of information and expertise. The SSTC may have created the NRCSTD partly with this in mind; the State Planning and Economic commissions also increased their expertise by

[41] The SSTC also allocated funding for very different types of policy-related activities, such as a "Beijing Youth Forum" organized by the NRCSTD, which brought together thirty-to-forty-year-olds once a month for lively debate of various policy issues.

making use of a network of expert consulting groups organized under a "China International Engineering Consulting Corporation" to help evaluate the feasibility of different projects considered for inclusion in their five- or one-year plans. The announcement of the two commissions' plan to make use of the corporation stated that the corporation planned to "recruit foreign specialists to join its consulting business in the hope of providing the state with reliable data needed for correct decision making."^[42] The State Planning Commission's enhancement of its capability to supply such expertise shifted the balance between the expert resources of the State Council (enhanced by the creation of the TERC, which was set up partly to advise the State Council on major projects, such as the ones included in the five-year and annual plans) and the SPC back toward the latter. Some ministries also acted to enhance their analytical capability, either by enlarging their research staff or by moving to increase their contacts with other relevant units and experts. Thus, the exact degree to which the centers altered the balance of expertise (and thus informal authority) between the leadership and the ministries and commissions is uncertain.

Incentive Effects

In the preceding discussion I suggested that the research centers provided policymakers with information illuminating trade-offs and complementarities between policy areas, and to some extent shifted the balance of informal authority toward the leadership by diminishing the ministries' relative monopoly of expertise in their functional area. In this section I ask whether the research centers also changed the incentives of researchers and ministries so as to promote coordination through altered research strategies or mutual adjustment between ministries—for example, bargaining or consensus building. The discussion is essentially analytical, suggesting some propositions that might be tested through interviewing researchers and ministerial personnel; thus far, I do not have the data to do more.

First, the research centers provided different incentives for research personnel than did the rest of the bureaucratic structure. As I have already noted, researchers organized into functionally specialized research institutes subordinate to ministries have little if any incentive to consider the impact of ministry actions on other units. The tendency of such researchers to produce research results oriented toward fulfilling the goals of their superior ministries has been noted often in the Chinese press. Researchers working for the research centers, on the other hand,

[42] Lin Xi, "Important Capital Construction and Technological Transformation Projects to Be Examined by Consulting Organs Before Finalization," Renmin Ribao , 8 February 1986, in FBIS , 21 February 1986, K11.

had no such incentives; indeed, their incentives were to consider the impact of policies in the broadest possible perspective and thus to take account of externalities between agencies. By building staffs that included individuals with a variety of expertise and from multiple agencies, the research centers attempted to provide both the capability and the incentives for researchers to consider the interrelationship between policy areas. Of course, the primary incentives of those researchers were to respond to the priorities of the centers' directors and, ultimately, of the premier. Policy coordination was one such priority, but hardly the only one; accordingly, researchers in these centers could not be expected always to adopt such a perspective.

What effect did the establishment of the research centers have on the incentives of the ministries? One effect, discussed earlier, was to motivate them to increase their expert resources in an effort to maintain their relative authority vis-à-vis the center. However, this ministerial strategy need not necessarily promote policy coordination, and might even interfere with it. Don K. Price has suggested that a major source of fragmentation in the American bureaucracy is precisely the cultural tendency for special interests to appeal to "science" (or expertise) in support of their special goals.^[43] The key question is whether the research centers created incentives for the ministries to seek out and provide information regarding policy externalities and to propose policies that took account of such externalities.

The research centers might have done so in three ways. First, without altering the incentive structure, the centers provided information necessary for the ministries to respond to already-existing incentives for coordinating behavior. That is, ministries always had an incentive to make clear the externalities for them of policies proposed by other agencies; prior to the establishment of the research centers, however, it appears that they often could not do so because policies were frequently considered in a unidimensional manner, with many potentially affected agencies being ignored during the decision-making process and not even aware that the policy was being considered until after its adoption. A major function of the research centers was to collect views on policy proposals from all relevant agencies. Thus, when a ministry proposed a major policy, other units were much more likely to be made aware of it and thus be able to provide information on the externalities of that decision for their particular policy jurisdiction.

Second, the research centers might actually have altered the incentives of the ministries to seek out information on policy externalities and to

[43] Don K. Price, America's Unwritten Constitution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985).

adjust their policies to take other agencies into account. Because the centers supposedly provided an "unbiased" view, taking account of interdepartmental effects, any ministry wishing to argue against a research center's view would have to make a better case. This should have encouraged the ministries not only to enhance their analytical capacity (as we have already seen), but also to seek out information on other functional areas so that they could make a case that the policy was good, not only for them, but also for other agencies. This hypothesis about the incentive effects of the centers remains to be tested, however, through interviews exploring whether the ministries' behavior actually changed in this manner.

Finally, the research centers probably promoted bargaining among ministries. The meetings they organized provided an important forum in which such bargaining could occur. Although ministries could provide their own views independently to the State Council, they had every reason to believe that a document reflecting agreement among multiple agencies would carry more weight than one expressing the opinion of a single agency. It therefore would be in the interest of each agency to reach some kind of compromise with other agencies, unless it had reason to believe that it could do better on its own. The latter might be true either because the goals of the agency diverged so greatly from those of others that compromise seemed impossible or, alternatively, because it reflected a belief that the ministry's resources were large enough to allow it to prevail against the opinions of the research center and other ministries. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for example, appeared to feel secure enough in its influence to go directly to the premier rather than reaching accommodation with the CIS or other units; according to one of its officials, its suggestions were sometimes overruled but were accepted on other occasions. A researcher from the CIS argued, however, that the ministry usually managed to get its preferred policies adopted.

The centers promoted bargaining—in the form of logrolling or quidpro-quos—between agencies in other ways than simply providing the forums in which such discussions might take place. The centers altered the nature of interdepartmental discussions in both horizontal (cross-departmental and even cross-system) and vertical (long-term planning) ways that, as Robert Keohane has argued for the effect of international regimes on cooperation between nations, made the striking of deals between ministries more likely. First, the centers organized discussions that "cluster issues." As Keohane argued about international regimes: "Clustering of issues under a regime facilitates side-payments among these issues: more potential quids are available for the quo . Without international regimes linking clusters of issues to one another, side-payments and linkages would be difficult to arrange in world politics; in the absence of a price system for the exchange of favors, institutional barriers

would hinder the construction of mutually beneficial bargains."^[44] The interdepartmental discussions organized by the centers may have served a similar function. Second, the ongoing discussions and particularly the long-term planning efforts altered the policy process in ways that effectively placed the participants in a repeated-game situation: they could expect to interact repeatedly with other agencies that formerly they might only occasionally have encountered. Incentives were thereby created to cooperate now in exchange for future cooperation. Moreover, some of that future cooperation could be institutionalized in the present when policy documents were formulated that planned ahead many years. Like policy clustering, long-term planning created more potential "quids."

If the meetings organized by the centers promoted bargaining between ministries, they clearly did not produce total consensus on policy. One would expect that agreement would be reached primarily in those cases where ministries could discover complementarities between their desired policies, or where they could obtain desired concessions from other agencies without making more costly concessions of their own. This did not necessarily always happen. Center officials speak of normally providing final documents to the State Council that laid out remaining areas of disagreement. That these meetings did not produce total consensus is not undesirable from the point of view of the leadership: where basic value conflicts were revealed, the leadership obviously would prefer to make the needed trade-offs itself.