Renewal And Heritage: A Study Of County Administrative Organizations And Governance Changes In Wuxian, Jiangsu Province,1912-1937

County governance, an abbreviation of the politics at the county level, is a general name for aseries of system arrangement, the structure of the organization, power relations and measuresconcerning public affairs done by all political entities. The institution of county is an integral part ofthe local administration system in China. It underwent significant changes in the Republic of China.The origin of many political arrangements in current local politics can be traced back to this period.However, the county governance in Jiangsu Province, one key political region of the Republic ofChina, remained untapped. The special geographic location and historical background make theresearch on county governance in Wuxian during the period of the Republic meaningful.This dissertation focuses on the county administrative organizations and governance changes inWuxian of Jiangsu Province between the first year of the Republic of China1912and1937when thecounty government was withdrawn after the Japanese invasion. The geographical range of Wuxianapproximately equals the city of Suzhou today. The objective of this dissertation is to explore itshistorical background and origins, to explain the reasons for the change in depth and its farreachinginflurence as well, to find out the logics for the inheritance and interraction, through the staticdiagram of the structure, relationship and mechanism of the county administration and the dynamicconstruction of the system and changes of governance. By doing the above mentioned, thedissertation tries to have a good grasp of the development of the modern Chinese system of localadministration developing from monarchy to constitutional system and find out the countygovernment in the old and the new alternating mechanism. The research adopts the approach ofhistorical institutionalism in political theory, based on the historical materials, combining thestructure, history with behavior, so as to have a dynamic study of county governance and itschanging process. The research perspectives include the following four aspects: the county politicalsystem; county governance structure; governance policy; activities of county governance.By studying the changes, power structure shift, management and allocation of county system, thestudy found out that extremely strong path dependence exists on Wuxian county governance. Thereform during the late Qing Dynasty successfully planned and guided the direction and practical pathfor the county development in the upcoming decades although it failed to succeed then.,The countygovernment of the Republic has inherited a lot from the reform in the Qing Dynasty, but at the sametime, it also has some new developments.In the complementary part, the new development of county governance in Wuxian includes thefollowing characteristics: continuous differentiation of power structure, political role and socialstrata; a mixture of the old political principles, organization design, concept, political role, behaviorwith the new style in county governance of the Republic; a special phenomenon of power sharingbetween the officials and the squires; the greatest shortcoming for the county governance is to fail tofully eradicate “Rule by man”; the almighty tendency in Wuxian county administrative organizationsalready has become apparent after the establishment of the Nanjing National Government, becauseof the expansion of the administrative functions and the administrative system and the degenerationof civil society.