Urban Community Governance Change And Social Capital Research (1978 ~ 2008)

In this paper, there is a very important view which is called "combine" impenetrating entirely. Combining the theories of governance, institution change and social capital, this paper wants to find out the rule of society development through researching urban community in China.Although the theories of governance, institution change and social capital explains society development in different ways, there is a logic relationship among the three theories, which could be summarized as cooperation. How to reach the extensive cooperation in society is a very important target for western academe. The theories of governance, institution change and social capital just accord with it as theory tools.In theory, institution change needs the cooperation between the first action groups and the second action groups, which is similar as the cooperation between government and society advocated by governance. And the social capital is the right way to disabuse the collective action dilemma in cooperation, which embodies as participation network, trust and reciprocal norm. The logic built on the base of cooperation set up a foundation for combineing the three theories as theory tools, with the logical jumping-off point of institution change. By the way of institution change, this paper analyses the relationship between urban community governance transformation in China and social capital from macro-level to micro-level.Firstly, on macro-level, this paper reviews the history of urban community governance transformation in China by dividing it to afore-governance age, transition age and governance transformation age. Then, the three characters of urban community governance transformation in China are summarized as emphasizing formal system transformation, government leading and area pattern, which point out the problems in it. In form, forced institution change would result in the performance of institution change impelled by cooperation between government and society. In content, emphasizing formal system transformation would result in drop behind of informal norm which is the important support to formal system. No matter form or content, social capital is all important for urban community governance transformation in China in future. In history, social capital in urban community in China took twice transformations obviously from tradition social capital to workunit (danwei) social capital and from workunit (danwei) social capital to civil social capital. Because of incompleteness of formal system transformation, the second transformation of social capital in urban community has not finished. At present, there are three forms of social capital which is coexisted, pockety and underdeveloped. These chacracters of social capital in urban community in China go against urban community governance in China reaching to good governance.Secondly, on micro-level, this paper analyses the relationship between urban community governance transformation and social capital in urban community in China with a case study of community Z in Shanghai. The enervation of workunit (danwei) system results in the transformation from workunit (danwei) social capital to a coexisted structure which including tradition social capital, workunit (danwei) social capital and civil social capital. The strong contact of workunit (danwei) social capital restricts the whole social capital increasing. Contrary, the weak contact of civil social capital enlarges the cooperation in urban community. However, under the effect of path dependence, workunit (danwei) system still can strengthen by itself, which will hold on workunit (danwei) social capital. Simultaneously, tradition social capital and workunit (danwei) social capital supply the power to workunit (danwei) system for strengthening by itself. Therefore, the dependace on formal rules and informal norms each other strengthens the effect of path dependence for urban community governance transformation. If we want to get rid of path dependence on workunit (danwei) system, we should strengthen community system by itself with the dependace on civil social capital and community system each other.Establishing the status of community system is the necessary for urban community governance transformation in China, which needs government and people realize the effect of increasing return brought by community system. And the political elites in government and civil elites in autonomous organization of community usually play role of the precursor for the first action groups and the second action groups. In order to avoid the public interests loss which maybe result from these elites' pursueing the personal interests in the process of boosting urban community governance transformation, we need enough civil social capital to make sure the democracy and performance of collective action. Then, it's a logical choice to cultivate civil social capital such as general trust and reciprocal norm that embed in a kind of opened network through founding civil society and system of autonomous organization of community and using the power of government to promote.