Community Participation: Foundation Of Social Stability

Social stability is one of the management objectives of the government of any country. Social stability includes political stability, economic stability, emotional stability and social order stability, etc. in which the social ideological and emotional stability of members is the psychological foundation of social stability. Social attitude is the basic index reflecting social psychology. In the social transformation in China, the social attitude of part of masses is tending to be uncertainty which mainly reflects in the following: the indexes of social safe sense, and social fair sense, and social trust sense, etc. which represent the positive orientation of social attitude are lower, however, the indexes of social conflict sense and social pressure sense which represent the negative orientation of social attitude are high. Ideological and emotional instability of the masses has been a social problem needed to be solved.Public participation is the base of social management. As the grass-roots organization in the social management, the community construction and management also need active participation of its members. In the process of social reform in our country, community participation could improve the social attitudes of the public at the micro level through playing its role on the macro-social dimensions and lay a psychological foundation for social stability then.From a macro point of view, community participation can do well in the formation of the core elements of social capitals which includes networks, regulations and trust, etc. so that the social capital could be promoted. In terms of production and allocation of public goods, community organizations could compile the requirements information about community public goods expressed by residents through community participation and then reflect it to the government. At the same time, community organizations could also integrate the community resources so as to make up the defects of government and market in providing public goods. In addition, community participation could help the establishment of multiple interest expression mechanism which could not only widen ways for the expression of diverse interests of community members but also play an intermediary role between the public and the government and facilitate the consultation and communication among groups with various interests and members of community and government.From a microscopic point of view, community participation is helpful to improve the social attitudes of public and lay psychological foundation for social stability. On one hand, residents'sense of security, trust and fairness could be enhanced and their sense of social stress and conflict should be lessened through community participation which could be conducive to cultivate the social capital and meet the needs of residents in the area of public goods and express interests. On the other hand, community residents could participate in the community affairs and activities related with themselves through the multiple interests'expression mechanism including community dialog and forum for residents established in the course of community participation. In this way, the conflicts either among groups with different interests in the same community or between community groups and external different interests groups and government sector so that residents'cognitive on fair, security and harmonious could be formed. In the end residents'conflict sense could be reduced and their fairness sense could be strengthened which could promote the realization of harmonious and stable society.Although community participation is helpful in maintaining social stability on both macro and micro-level, nationwide expanded participation approach adopted by Western developed countries is not suitable for the needs of social management in our country because of the limited action of the parties in community participation, i.e. community residents, government institutions and community organizations restricted by the limitation of rules, resources and other structural factors in social transformation process. For the above reasons, here I put forward an idea of constructing moderate community participation frame, i.e. government and other relative parties should develop appropriate rules and systems on the basis of the participation power and ability of main parities and dispose resources accordingly so that residents and other relative parties could achieve their goals accordingly in the course of community construction and social development. Concretely, this moderate community participation framework consists of three aspects: at the beginning, it is the fundamental guarantee of moderate community participation to develop unified and flexible rules and systems. The properties sharing by all communities should be put in the unified system of government administration, at the same time, community organizations and residents also should formulate some informal and flexible systems in accordance with their own needs by giving consideration to the different requirements and characteristics among communities which couldn't be involved in the unified management system. This institutional framework could ensure that community undertake due responsibilities in social management and realize its function in the domination and management on basic-level regime. It can also provide more ways or channels for community groups with different interests to select when they desire to participating community affairs. Secondly, it is the effective platform to dispose resources in the light of local conditions. The actual needs of community and community resident should be the essential grounds either when government disposes resources for different communities or when community provides resources for different interests groups through which could meet the residents'needs and raise residents'participation enthusiasm and make participation benefit maximize. In this way, it could make limited resources to play roles fully so that social management should achieve actual effects. Thirdly, it is the real meaning of moderate community participation that the residents with different interests demand could take part in different community affairs through different ways according to their different needs and desires, so as to guarantee the interests related residents, especially those people who have more interests in the community could have more opportunities to participate in community affairs. In this moderate community participation frame, not only could the interests of relative group be protected, their enthusiasm and sense of attachment identity to the community could also be aroused so that they could engage in community building with greater passion. In the meantime, it could also avoid bringing trouble and resentment to residents resulted from requiring them to take part in those affairs that have little relation with their own interests, then the efficiency of community management can also be raised accordingly.Moderate community participation is conducive not only to reducing cost and ensuring the quality of participation but also to broadening the scope of community participation. "Moderate" could not only realize the"quality"of community participation but also ensure the above which is the actual foundation for"expand"."Expand"could strengthen the"quantity"of community participation and could be benefited from "moderate". Only with the guarantee of "quality" and"quantity"could community participation be the system and platform for people to express their needs and meet their diversified interests and become one of the basic measures to realizing effective social management so that various social contradictions could be resolved in system and social stability could be realized. According to the current situation in China, in order to achieve moderate and effective community participation, government should provide system and resources support. Community non-profit organizations should be developed sufficiently, meanwhile the dual function of residents ' committee and villagers ' Committee which are the two main community forms in China should be preserved in order to make the interests of the community members be the centre of all community task and open multiple participation channels for residents to express and realize their interests. To broaden the orderly participation of interest related groups, the enthusiasm of community participation should be fully mobilized and the participation sense of community members should be enhanced and their participation skills should be trained. Only through this moderate community participation frame could gather community members together and form strong community participation efforts so as to meet residents'own demands and then build up a mechanism to solve the problem at the grass-roots which could ensure the realization of community progress and social stability.