The Implications Of A Bargaining System View
What are some of the practical consequences of bargaining for both the process of making policy and the outputs and outcomes of that process? I believe that five consequences are of particular importance:
Decisions generally are slow in coming; the process of consensus building and negotiation is protracted. The more geographic areas and functional systems that must be involved in the process the more laborious will be the process of negotiation.
It is difficult to definitively say when a decision really has been made. Frequently, decisions are made "in principle," with nettlesome details left for future resolution. The requisite resolution of these details may never occur. Decisions concerning the building of nuclear power plants and the Three Gorges Project are excellent examples of this phenomenon.[58] There is an indeterminacy to outcomes. Issues seem to rise like Lazarus on the agenda; they never stay buried. This process is the political equivalent of protracted guerrilla warfare.
Even once a policy is formulated and adopted, the implementation process is characterized by negotiation among and between levels of the hierarchy, sometimes all the way down to the grass roots. Each level slightly deflects policy in a direction favorable to its interests; by the time one has moved through six, seven, or more layers of the system, the cumulative distortion (not to mention bureaucratic constipation) can be great. Almost invariably, unanticipated and unwelcome consequences are part of the implementation process from the Center's perspective.
One of the biggest mistakes that the Center can make is to set too many high-priority goals simultaneously. For both formulation and implementation to be effective, the elite must be united on the objective and willing to expend considerable political and economic resources as a seemingly endless bargaining process unfolds. There
is no substitute for elite attention and the focused use of resources in the bargaining process. However, the ability to focus elite attention and resources is often diluted by divergent priorities among elite members, their different support bases, and the shared desire of the entire leadership to produce rapid change. This shared desire to produce rapid change almost assures that the elite will bite off more than it can chew.
Because bargaining is extensive, the legal framework is poorly developed, and social norms and system legitimacy suffered egregious harm in the Cultural Revolution era, it is exceedingly difficult to separate legitimate and necessary bargaining activity from corruption. It is essential that the system create a legal framework and affirm widely shared values, procedures, and norms to govern this activity. The race is between the process of establishing these norms and the loss of system legitimacy. This may be the most important race in which Beijing's leaders are running.