Party Institutionalisation And Political Order In Rural China Since Mordern Times

It is a core issue to explore the "two-way interaction" mechanism between village and state during the process of rural China's political modernization. In the field of comparative politics, generally speaking, both of strong social forces and state power are needed to effectively build this "two-way interaction" mechanism. However, for the developing countries, on the one hand, the traditional social dominant force has been fragmented in the process of transformation, on the other hand, national authority has also been dissipated, making the endogenous mechanism of rural political modernization is extremely scarce. Therefore, whether it is a "social-centrism"or a "state-centrism" pattern, it is unable to change the reality of developing countries'political deterioration. In fact, political parties have been a key factor of rural political modernization in these countries, that is a "party-centrism" path, and China is no exception.Since modern times, political parties in China are trying to integrate diffused power between state and society, to make the traditional "Culture nexus of power" transform to "organizational nexus of power". While, through the history, it could be found that ruling parties'different "party institutionalizatio" levels would produce different results for the rural regime's modernization construction. Based on researches about party institutionalization at home and broad, this article believes that there are three indicators to investigate political parties'institutionalization level, they are party organization network, party autonomy and party cohesion. This three indicators are used to measure the changes of Chinese ruling parties institutionalization levels since modern times, to assess the development logic of rural political modernization, and to explore the party institutionalization's limits and way out under the unique background of China's party-state system.From1924to1949, due to the overall weakening in the three aspects of KTM's party organization network, party autonomy and party cohesion, making it an absolute disadvantage in the party, government and military sequence,and also making it be captured by the rural evil gentry. The final political consequences were KTM not only failed to play an effective role in the convergence between village and state, but also the KTM itself sank into involution. From1949to1966, as a ruling party, CCP successfully comprehensively transformed the state and society. On the one hand, CCP achieved a high degree of coupling with the national institution system, and promoted the party-government dual-track system operate efficiently; on the other hand,"re-organization" of rural society and the control system had been come true, so that the rural society and fundamental regime could be linked up on the basis of the institutionalization platform of political party. But it can not be ignored that party, government and social unity had been integrated together, forming a highly centralized power structure in village, together with campaign-style governance, made CCP fall into a vicious cycle of involution inevitably, and this is also one of the reasons for the Cultural Revolution. Since1978, the construction of CCP's institutionalization has been facing new challenges, for the governance in rural society, problems in CCP's institutionalization has led to rural political decadence. With grassroots political power's gradually retracement and decentralization in market-oriented reform, CCP's party organization network and party autonomy fail to fulfill adaptive adjustment due to the isomorphic relationship between party and government, which cause problem of political responsiveness' weakening, and this will be bad for CCP's governing legitimacy in the social transition period.Through the comparison of history, it could be found that variations between party institutionalization and party involution occurred under the background of "party-state system". It argues that there are actually two aspects of limits in party institutionalization under "party-state system":Firstly, problems of party's political responsiveness. The "reverse responsiveness" is top-down and much too dependent on rulers, and so is fragile and unsustainable. Secondly, problems of system performance. As a kind of "pressure system", party institutionalization under "party-state system" seriously suppressed the development of rural social organizations, hinder the formation of rural society's spontaneous order, and then have a bad effect on performance of party institutionalization.Given this, in order to change the increasingly decrepit situation of China's rural political order, and promote the effective interaction between village and state, several steps must be taken. First, it is necessary to increase the depth of the party organization network, so that a cross situation between political party and other rural social organizations would come true, which could provide an organizational system channel for the "two-way interaction "between rural society and fundamental regime, only then can party responsiveness be constantly growing, can ruling party's legitimacy as well as governance effectiveness be enhanced.Second, it is significant to adjust the party autonomy, so that the management of rural social organizations could be transformed from "State Corporatism" to "Social Corporatism", which would release the vitality of rural society, form a "independent, pluralistic, cross" situation, and achieve mutual empowerment between political party and other rural social organization. Only can this kind of villages public affairs' governance channel improve both of ruling party's institutionalization level and rural governance performance.