“谁得到什么”始终是公共政策的核心议题,普遍性和中立性则是公共政策的关键特质和重要美德。在现代国家治理中,许多国家通过采取肯定性行动或类似政策,修正由历史、既往政策或其他原因所造成的社会差距,以促进不同人群之间的权利及发展机会的平等。肯定性行动政策以非均衡的政策工具追求均衡的治理目标,突显了明显的国家干预特性。随着治理理念的流行和社会观念氛围的变化,肯定性行动似已成为国家治理的一个悖论,并提示多元主义时代需要国家治理和公共政策的新范式。多元主义时代国家治理需要平衡的差异和不均衡越来越多,多样性本身更被赋予重要的积极价值。国家治理和公共政策趋向多样性管理的范式转型是一个迫切的时代问题,也将使肯定性行动政策融入多样性管理的治理逻辑和实践框架之中,以充分实现其治理潜力。

“Who gets what?” is always the core issue of public policy, so generality and neutrality are the key virtues in the construction of public policies. In modern state governance, many countries adopt affirmative action and similar policies to redress inequalities deriving from history, past policies or other reasons in the hope of promoting equal rights and development opportunity among different groups. Pursuing balanced governance goals by imbalanced policy instruments, affirmative action policy exhibits an interventionist-inclination, which conflicts with the general change in public policy to be less controlling and interventionist. In the context of governance and the greatly changed climate of ideas, affirmative action seems to be a paradox in state governance, suggesting that the pluralist era calls for a paradigm shift in state governance and public policy. With the increase of diversities in the era of pluralism, diversity is being attached to more important positive values. As an urgent issue of the times, such a paradigm shift will integrate affirmative action into the governance logic and practical framework of diversity management so as to fully realize its governance potentials.