Research On The Political Function Of The Intermediary Society In Shaping Of The Modern State

Research on the Political Function of the Intermediary Society in Shaping of the Modern State----A Studying of the Case of the Business Trade Society in ModernChina (1904-1937)Research on voluntary intermediary associations in modern China have been more focused on civil society in realm of history. The theory of Civil Society and Corporatism has been the dominant model in explaining intermediary associations. Although the imperfection of civil society theory has been realized generally, it is difficult in modifying the theory for the ecological condition of politics and society around it has always been neglected. This dissertation is trying to break through the model of civil society and construct a new frame for explaining the voluntary association by the case study about the business trade organization in modern China deposited the context of shape of modern. The dissertation think that the attribute of the business trade organization is intermediary organization between the state and the citizen, or state and the corporation just as that of the intermediary association in Western Democracy Country. The functions differ from each other for the diversity surroundings in which the organization has grown up. The voluntary organization in modern China played a important role in administering the local society and assisting the government in implementing the policy, in contrast to the western counterpart in confining the expand of the state power and restrict the political authorization as civil society . In spite of the potency of businessmen or the bourgeoisie and their association in eroding the old social structure and the political institution based on it, the business trade societies were conservative , aiming at maintain the existing social order, not a subject to promote the reform of institution initiatively.The intermediary society, nevertheless, primarily functioned passively and demobilization, just as Joesph fewsmith had pointed out. These societies initiated in traditional society played active and many-handed rolls in the shape of the modern state: 1. acted as the layer of insulation between the warlord and the local society, rejecting the excessive trespass and maintain the social order in the background of the absent of the authority of modern china. 2. Assisting government in implementing the policy and strengthening the penetrating capacity for the state to integrate and control society during the process of the shape of the modern China. 3. Acted as agency of expressing public will as to support the restricted legitimacy of the state. At the meantime, to expand the political right in the elite stratum, while the parliament, the linkage system, is hard to perform the due function. For the transitional society in which the democracy has not been set up steadily and efficiently, the intermediary society is fiction of parliament and the substitute ofthe political party, ------maintaining interest input to some extent,supporting the legitimacy, at the same time , have the function which the parliament and the political party don not possess in intensifying the state control and purging out all the anti-government elements so as to the balance between the mobilization and control may be kept.The intermediary society exerted potential effects in boosting the political democracy to the extent that increase the communication and connection between the state and the society as the Emile Durkheim has argued, although the effects were greatly refined. Its dysfunction originated from its organizational character brought easily about the diverging from the function of interest expression, and was reduced to the agency of the social devise of the state authority which is strong in controlling, but infirm in inputting.