Research On Problems Of Citizen Participation In Urban Community Governance

Report to the seventeenth national congress of the Communist Party of China express that the most effective and extensive way for the people to be masters of the country is that they directly exercise their democratic rights in accordance with the law to manage public affairs and public service programs at the primary level, practice self-management, self-service, self-education and self-oversight, and exercise democratic oversight over cadres. Such practices must be emphasized and promoted as the groundwork for developing socialist democracy. We need to improve the dynamic mechanism of people's self-governance at the primary level under the leadership of primary Party organizations, expand the scope of self-governance, and improve the institution for democratic management, with a view to turning urban and rural neighborhoods into communities of social life that are well managed, supported by complete services, and filled with civility and harmony. This indicates the urban and countryside community is the fundamental unit that develops the democracy at the grassroots level. We do well the community governance and develop direct participation democracy at the grassroots level. This is the direction of the realistic urban community governance and citizen participation and the basic starting point of fundamental research.In social benefit multiple times, urban community governance is a system innovation leaded by the government top-down, this innovation is not only the static macroscopic system arrangement, more is the dynamic process of countries-market-society splitting unceasingly and interaction continual. Although the government is still locomotive of social reforms, but the government and unit is no longer main bodies of urban social resource allocation, other social organizations, community public and the government participate in community public administration together, and form the net structure of community governance. This is advantageous to alleviate urban society contradictions in the transition periods and obtain the political legitimacy resources. At the same time, it provides direct system space for citizen participation and grassroots democracy. The citizen participation is meaning of democracy, the participation is also the democracy initial manifestation. The practice of citizen participation in community governance establishes the favorable conditions for developing city grassroots democracy. Urban citizen participation is the practice beginning in city grassroots democracy, and also the basic project of the national democracy. The practice of citizen participation promotes the development of community governance and the growth of grassroots democracy in the community, the democracy is no longer remote and abstract, but becomes real in citizen's community life. Little drops of the community democratic life provides the most direct place and the testing fields for the democracy development. The practice of citizen participation in community governance is a process of gradual development. It has experienced the course from the original mobilized participation to independent participation, again to the organization participation. The democratic life of citizen participation in community governance begins to overflow community to the wider social space. The direct experience of citizen participation in the community governance realizes the cohesion and interaction of the grassroots democracy and the national democracy in urban community through innovative mechanisms in many cities.The practice of citizen participation in community governance expands gradually following social system reform and plays an important role in development of urban community governance and grassroots democracy. But we also must face the realistic problem of insufficient citizen participation. The phenomenon that local government mobilizes excessively to complete the established political goals, and does not support even suppresses the citizen participation in the name of maintaining social stability still exists. The sense of community belonging and recognition is not high of citizen individual and organizations, and too much attention to individual interests causes dilemmas in community governance. We must make the comprehensive and objective appraisal from aspects of academy and experience, and undertake concrete analysis on the motive and problem of citizen participation from aspects of the system safeguard, benefit driving and value recognition etc. We should put forward reasonable suggestions to promote citizen participation orderly and moderately from aspects of system, organization and culture etc. Citizen participation in community governance is a basic project of socialist democracy. The practice of citizen participation not only promotes the development of urban grassroots democracy but also strengthens the foundation of socialist democracy. Citizen participation in community governance is a process of cognition and realization civil rights. It is also a process that citizen individual, community self-organization and government learn and progress together. Citizen participation in community governance should avoid government excessive mobilization. The good citizen participation should be moderate scale, various forms and gradual developing process. Simple mobilization and boom in short time are not the normal citizen participation. The moderate balanced citizen participation is the most appropriate to the democracy development. Of course, the success of urban community governance and the development of grassroots democracy depend on the growth of modern country and modern civil society together, and depend on good cooperation which the government promote initiatively top-down and citizen participate actively bottom-up. We cannot make excessive demands on the urban community governance and the citizen participation that "is on the way". We must evaluate objectively to the positive effects and problems of the government, citizen, social organization in community governance. We should remain cautious optimism to the expanding practice of citizen participation in community governance, the gradual development of city grassroots democracy, and the future tendency that community grassroots democracy extends to the national democracy. Although this process may be difficult and even long, but it is not illusory and may be expected.