Self-Management And Rule-of-Law In Rural Areas During Transitional Period

This thesis aims to study the state of self-management and rule-of-law in China's rural areas, as well as it's numerous constructions and transitions, during this transitional period from an overlapping perspective of time, covering both ancient and contemporary age, and space, in the level of both state and society. The writer lays special attention, within the theoretical framework of state modernization, on the living conditions of the"citizens"in rural areas, and the narrative of rule-of-law in rural society and its possible development under the grand narrative of modernization of legal systems.The basic viewpoint of this thesis is that, in the view of the traditional society, there does exist, in a sense, a self-management during the development of China's rural society. However, this self-management is a kind of"spontaneous self-management"(which can hardly be identified as self-management according to western classical theories on this subject), in that the rural society, in contrast with the ancient governments and cities, is an"imaginary foreign land"drifting remotely and indistinctly and is excluded by the binary pattern of state and society. Nevertheless, this long-existing tradition of spontaneous self-management in rural areas naturally evolved into a system of power, authority and values with specific reasonableness both in time and space, which undoubtedly provided a substantial political and social foundation for the stable operation of the political system of the feudal empire. Although in ancient China, the state power did try to exercise its"governing"in rural society, it failed due to its lack of financial strength and its inefficient ability of social mobilization, most importantly, its motivating mechanism of reaching into the rural society. Since the Qing Dynasty, facing both domestic and foreign threats and the unavoidable attack resulting from the backwardness, the task of"state building"has been getting increasingly urgent. In order to realize the integration of the state, to improve its ability of absorbing social recourses from rural areas, and to exercise an efficient social control, so as to take part in the increasingly fierce international competition, the government was forced to redefine its role and boundary, and launch a campaign of modernization.Due to the closeness of the social economic patterns and the mode of production in China's traditional rural areas, and due to the peculiarity of the power structures and the social capital forms, as well as the self-sufficiency of the value and belief systems in the field of rural areas, it is difficult for China's rural society to be logically integrated into the modern national system, so as to realize the holistic advancement of national modernization. Therefore, along the double process of"state building"and"national modernization", conflicts and games between the state and the rural areas are inevitable, which forms the very historical and social background in which this thesis is constructed. Meanwhile, along the progress of modernization in contemporary China, the modernization of the legal systems is also a significant dimension. It is reasonable to believe that the legal reform displays an effort to transform our country from a traditional nation into a modernized one, the rule of law is an indispensible part in this enterprise of modernization, which is intimately related to the construction of our national system and the functioning of the political power, and that the realization of rule-of-law is an essential task in China's practice of modernization. Therefore, to some extent, an inner paradox constituted of rule-of-law and self-management has already been formed within the domain of discourse in this thesis. In this these, the writer is also going to, based on Habermas's Communicative Action Theory, from the perspective of the function of law in communicating between"system"and"lebensweit"(life-world), demonstrate the crucial part that the law plays in the contemporary society, and furthermore, to study the validity of the narrative of the legal systems in the program of"Sending Law to the Countryside".In the background of the modernization of contemporary China and the construction of state political power, the self-management and the rule-of-law in rural society have constituted a discourse and action with inner paradox, which demands a broader and superior standpoint in order that, from which, such a paradox be supervised and mediated. For this purpose, the writer, in the end of the thesis, tries to introduce an analytical concept,"Constitutional Self-management", by which to understand and contrive the prospect and evolution of self-management and rule-of-law in rural areas from a high perspective of China's contemporary constitutional construction. As is known to all, the value of constitution, according to basic constitutional theories, lies in its value in the assurance of human rights and restriction of power under the rule of law on the democratic basis. Hence, in the prospect of self-management of rural areas in contemporary China, we have to, above all, regard peasants as citizens of the country, and understand and construct various systems on self-management of rural areas from the perspective of the assurance of civil rights. At the same time, self-management in China's rural areas should acquire, to some extent, a constitutional significance in its political functions, which serves as a systemic mechanism withstanding arbitrary abuse of the mighty state power, and forms a law-and-power relationship within the nation-society domain. Therefore, there is a dual quality considering both facts and regulations within the theoretical framework of Constitutional Self-management, and a brand new understanding of the problem of self-management and rule-of-law in rural areas can be obtained within the same framework.In the context of this thesis, the theory"Constitutional Self-management in Rural Areas"includes mainly the following three basic domains and objectives: firstly, the problem of legitimacy and validity of the legal order in rural society, in other words, how can a nation create a legitimate legal order and realize the rule of law in rural society; what's more, whether there exists, under the argumentation of knowledge on modernized nation, contradictions or conflicts between the value orientation and purpose of the legal order and constitutional democracy. The writer is going to briefly analyze this problem in the view of legislationism and Habermas's theories on deliberative democracy. Secondly, the division of the role as"peasants"and the role as"citizens"in rural society, as well as its reflection in the genealogy of rights. That is, what are the overlaps and divergences, under China's dual social structure of cities and the countryside, between the rights and the rights awareness of"peasants"and that of"citizens", which leads to an understanding of the constitutional significance of the transition from the role of"peasants"to the role of"citizens"on the constitutional principles of equal rights. Thirdly, to study, from a constitutional perspective, within the framework of the state and the society, and furthermore, the secondary framework of the state and the rural society, the nature, the range, the boundary and the styles of the right to self-management in rural areas; consequently, the fission and fusion, in the field of their functions and objectives, of the"lebensweit"consisting of the holistic rural society and the"primary-level society"situated on the lowest level in the genealogy of state power; and finally the question of how to construct a constitutional self-management in rural areas in the view of constitutionalism.