Research On The Correlation Between Social Capital And Turnout Of Neighborhood Committee Of Urban Residents

Turnout is an extremely significant way for citizens to take part in national governance. Through it, the citizens can express their needs and willingness and affect policy process in the end. In the year of 1988, China launched a great policy in the rural China: the basic-level election, and direct election methods are generally applied to elections at the basic level. The rural citizens took an active part in the basic-level election, turnout became an important way for them to express benefits. By the 1990 s, the basic-level election appeared in cities. Much attention was paid to the urban basic-level election. Tocqueville, Almond and so many people believed that sociocultural factors have significant impact on turnout. Moreover, this conclusion was confirmed by Putnam: social capital can push citizens to take part in national governance.This thesis is based on the China General Social Survey and took 5422 citizens in cities as a sample. I use SPSS18.0 as a method and make full use of descriptive statistics, factor analysis and logistic regression methods of mathematical statistics, in order to explore the relationship between urban residents’ social capital and turnout of neighborhood committee. I use Putnam’s definition of social capital and divide it into three dimensions: social trust, social networks and mutually-beneficial norms, thus I explore the relationship between social trust and turnout of neighborhood committee, social networks and turnout of neighborhood committee, and mutually-beneficial norms and turnout of neighborhood committee. The main conclusions are as follows:First, the situation of turnout of urban residents is unoptimistic. There are so many bystanders and the people who think turnout is nothing to do with them. Second, the stock of social capital of Urban Residents is complex. Social trust of urban residents looks good; the situation of participation of clubs and associations is unoptimistic; not so many residents took actions to help neighbors. Third, a higher degree does not guarantees a higher turnout. Fourth, social trust does not have a statistically significant effect on the turnout of neighborhood committee. Fifth, social networks have significant positive effect on the turnout of neighborhood committee. Sixth, mutually-beneficial-and-norms factor has significant positive effect on the turnout of neighborhood committee.