The Implementation of the Concept of Administrative Democracy and Its Institution Construction: Using Interactive Management to Explore the Impact of Cross-Strait Direct Transportation on Penghu and Its Adaptive Strategies
Ming-Shen Wang*, Yu-Tien Huang**, Chao-Ling Liu***
Abstract
Administrative democracy has become a major trend for administrative governance in democratic countries. In the process of policy-making, administrative organizations are more willing to interact and communicate with the public to understand public opinions better so that the adopted policy is of higher quality and can satisfy public demands. As a result, in the recent years citizens have been increasingly calling for participating in the government's policy-making process, such as through the proposed citizen conferences. Using an interactively managed public forum platform, this research explores the issue of the adaptive strategy adopted by Penghu County in response to cross-strait direct transportation. We invited 24 representatives from the industry, government, academic institutions, private organizations, and the press in Penghu County to share their versatile perspectives and to participate in rational debate. We combined the Interactive Management (IM) with Nominal Group Technique (NGT) and the process analysis of Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) to identify the reinforced relations among each strategy, and to generate a relations diagram of the reinforced structure. It was to verify the priority of reinforcement for each strategy and their directions. After the participants modified the structural chart, there was finally a consensus on the 12 strategies in cross-strait transportation. The research result could serve as references for the government policy-makers in making cross-strait policies. We expect that the related government departments could listen to heed people's opinions and communicate with them through rational debate in a democratic and open-minded fashion at public forums. This may help cultivate civil awareness, upgrade the standard of a civil society, and realize the objective of citizen governance.
Keywords: Interactive Management, Cross-Strait Direct Transportation, administrative democracy
*Professor, Graduate Institute of Public Affairs Management, National Sun Yat-Sen University
**Doctoral Student, Graduate Institute of Public Affairs Management, National Sun-Yat-Sen University
***Penghu County Council Speaker