From Conflict to Agreement: Analysis of Public Conflict from the Perspective of Public Participation in the Yangtze River Delta-Cases Study 2010-2012

This article uses a comparative case study as the method to analyze the relationship between the public participation and the public conflict. Several cases of public conflicts that occurred in Yangtze River Delta during 2011-2012 were adopted. The author concluded that: what caused the public conflict in Yangtze River Delta was relative to the damaged economic interests of the public, and as an intermediate variable, the public preferred to participate in the conflict in non-institutional form, which promoted the conflict into the level of "threat", then the government of higher level was forced to coordinate different interests to end the public conflict. The author put forward that empowering the public to participate in the public affairs was helpful to resolve the public conflict we face at this time.