Legal Research On Constructing New Villages And Villager Self-governance

As villagers'spontaneous yet systematic efforts to respond to the"power vacuum"after the disintegration of people's communion, villager self-governance is widely welcomed by villagers because it can meet their demand for democracy. At the same time, it is also attached great importance by the Party and government since it can meet the country's demand of reconstruction of order and maintenance of stability. Therefore, villager self-governance has been becoming an official institutional arrangement in China.The appearance and development of villager self-governance in China cannot do without traditional society's"route dependence". In the Chinese traditional society, state power could not have full control over the rural society due to deficit of ruling and information techniques, but as a result of various official restrictions, the rural society felt an inheriting need of combining together in order to face challenges to survive. Thus China's traditional rural society could form small autonomous communities, in which elite countrymen could operate internal management according to some principles of society of acquaintances. However, the social revolutions in modern times broke the autonomous order gradually developed in traditional society. The Land Reform launched by the Communist Party of China disintegrated the basis of traditional rural society's social self-governance from its root. Therefore, exploration of new measure of governance became a primary task of the Party and government after the foundation of new China. Villager self-governance came into birth against such a background, and because it accords with China's ruling demand, it has been transferred from a public spontaneous practice into a systematic effort, which has been vigorously pushed forward by government.The systematic construction of villager self-governance is mainly based upon the theory of democracy. However, in modern society, the traditional theory of democracy itself is faced with many doubts. Republic Democracy cannot supply enough guarantee for citizens'individual rights while Liberalist Democracy cannot give legitimate basis of the construction of public power. Thus villager self-governance system established based upon either republic or liberal democracy will inevitably have defects. The theory of Deliberative Democracy that is rising in the western world just can provide the systematic reform of villager self-governance with theoretic support. A systematic arrangement should be adapted to its own societal situation. As a systematic practice, villager self-governance appeared 20 years ago in China. In these 20 years, social, political and economic environment in rural areas have taken earth-shaking changes. Impacted by market economy, the state, county and villagers have been seeking different interests. Just because of different interest pursuits and defects of the system itself, there are some abnormal phenomena appearing in the practice of villager self-governance. Considering new changes in villages and the Party and government's policy of constructing new villages, villager self-governance must be reformed in many aspects.The operation of the system of villager self-governance not only has to face challenges of social environmental changes and theory updating in the macroscopic level, but also demands for concrete reforms in the microscopic level. Supported by the aforesaid social background and theory, this dissertation tries to analyze the direction of the reform of villager self-governance.In the first place, the author observes the villagers committees that are the autonomous organizations of grass-root people. Although the Constitution prescribes that the villagers committees are the autonomous organizations of grass-root people, the systematic arrangement of the Organic Law of the Villagers Committees and the concrete functions of the villagers committees in practice do not accord with their property of"social autonomous organizations". State functions that are not relevant to this property should be removed from villagers committees.Secondly, the author tries to analyze operational mechanisms of villager self-governance. The author analyzes the democratic election, democratic decision, democratic management, and democratic supervision. On the base of analysis of their respective contents, existing problems and causes, this paper further analyzes systematic measures of improvement of their respective operation manners.Thirdly, this paper discusses the survival space of villager self-governance. If the system of villager self-governance wants to gain larger space of development, it must properly deal with two pairs of relations, which are the relation between state and society, and the relation between autonomous organizations and grass-root Party organizations. As to the former, the author firstly analyzes the relation between counties and villages against the background of existing laws and regulations, and its problems in practice. At the same time, the author also discusses the problems'causes and possible methods of reform. The relation between counties and villages set in existing laws and regulations needs to be reconsidered. The ideal mode is that the public power and social power can cooperate with each other according to their different contents of public service. As to the relation between villagers committees and Party committees, the author points out that the root of their conflicts is that they have different sources of legitimacy. There are many measures to solve their conflicts in practice. The author believes that the realization of cooperative management is the ideal path of softening the intense between the two committees.Fourthly, this dissertation analyzes the fundamental way of elevating the quality of the villager self-governance. It argues that if the system of villager self-governance wants to become an authentic self-governance and self-service systematic design and realizes real election democracy and deliberative democracy, villagers'political isolation and decentralization should be fundamentally changed. Therefore, it is necessary to organize the individual villagers with highly rational social groups in order to participate in public affairs and influence public power through collective actions.At last, this dissertation analyzes the key issues relating to judicial safeguard of villager self-governance. With the change of economic system, expansion of political democracy and enhancement of people's sense of rights, various disputes related to village self-governance are incessantly increasing. Disputes of different types should be solved with different means, but judicature should be the most authoritative and the ultimate way. The author has noted that there are still some substantial obstacles with respect to judicial safeguard of villager self-governance, and demonstrated that theoretical and institutional efforts are in a desperate need for further reform of judicial review system, among others, to effectively safeguard legal rights and interests in the context of village self-governance.