The credibility and bargaining during the process of policy implementation—a case study of China’s prohibition of open burning of crop straw policy

The truncated decision-making of China’s public policy process will inevitably lead to palpable bargaining during implementation. However, there are few concerns and researches at present focus on bargaining intensity between government and social actors. Therefore, the Credibility Thesis is introduced to the policy process in this paper, and the differences of credibility perceived by the public, grassroots government and intermediate government are supposed to reflect the bargaining intensity among them. Based on the adjustability of policy targets and credibility differences, policy implementation is divided into eight types to explain diverse situations more systemically and effectively during policy implementation. Besides, taking prohibition of open burning of crop straw policy (POBSP) as an example, this paper measures the changes of credibility at three points of time during policy implementation and analyzes the bargaining situation among farmers and multi-level governments. The case study proves the applicability of the theoretical framework of the policy implementation based on credibility thesis. It can show the feedback procedure and mechanism of policy implementation, and provide a new perspective for the policy analysis and improving policy performance.