Clan Network, Public Goods Supply And Social Governance In The Qing Dynast

The formation and evolution of traditional Chinese social governance model is an important clue of understanding the current state and social governance in China.This paper focuses on the changes of social governance model in the Qing Dynasty and aims to bring a historical perspective into the study of state and social governance,trying to fully excavate the valuable “China’s wisdom” accumulated in the social governance of the Qing Dynasty and seek the logical starting point and modern value of the modernization of state governance from the long-term historical practice.On the one hand,the existing research on social governance model in the Qing Dynasty is fruitful,but the research on the change and transformation of social governance model in the Qing Dynasty is relatively insufficient.Although the existing literature tends to believe that non-government forces played an important role in local public goods provision and social governance,there still lacks effective theoretical and empirical evidence on the transformation of this relationship in the long course of history.On the other hand,in response to the question that why is a degree of social autonomy allowed in a highly centralized state,it is difficult to explain completely and coherently by the two existing viewpoints: the restriction of government capacity and the risk of centralization of power.In view of the inadequacy of existing literature and the unsolved confusion of the interaction between the government and non-government forces in the Qing Dynasty’s social governance,two central issues are discussed in this paper.First,what was the changing process of social governance model in the Qing Dynasty? Second,what role did the non-government forces represented by the clan network play in social governance? And how did this role change? What is the mechanism of clan network affecting social governance?Firstly,this paper constructs an analytical framework from two dimensions of state capacity and ruling risk and describes four types of social governance models in the Qing Dynasty: government dominated model,dual track of government and nongovernment model,non-government assisting model and non-government dominated model.Based on a large number of historical materials,this paper reveals the changing process of social governance model in Qing Dynasty from “government dominated” to“non-government dominated”.Before the mid-19 th century,social governance was mainly dominated by government and the role of non-government forces was only assisting.After the mid-19 th century,with the weakening of state capacity and the increasing of ruling risk,non-government forces represented by the clan network played a more powerful role in social governance,thus forming non-government dominated model in social governance.Secondly,using economic research methods,this paper constructs a three-party evolutionary game model and a three-player principal-agent model among rulers,local officials and clans.The dynamic adjustment mechanism of different social governance models in the Qing Dynasty was a typical evolutionary process.Through analyzing strategic stability of rulers,local officials and clans,evolutionary stable strategies(ESS)under different situations are derived.Type I equilibrium(government dominated)and Type Ⅱ equilibrium(non-government dominated)of social governance models are put forward,which depends on governance cost of the rulers,local officials and clans,as well as synergistic benefits of local officials and clans brought by the improvement of social governance performance.Based on this,this paper puts forward the first proposition.Since the middle and late Qing Dynasty,with the changes of the external environment,the governance costs of the rulers increased sharply and the rulers’ strategy changed from centralization to decentralization.Non-government forces took more active part in social governance and the social governance model evolved from Type I equilibrium to Type Ⅱ equilibrium.Moreover,based on the mechanism design theory,this paper constructs a threeplayer principal-agent model among rulers,local officials and clans,introducing three roles of the principal,supervisor and the actual agent and taking the possible collusion between local officials and clans into consideration.By solving the rulers’ optimization problem under the conditions of participation constraints and incentive compatible constraints of local officials and clans,the rulers’ optimal incentive contracts under different levels of state capacity are obtained.This model combines the rulers’ optimal incentive contracts with dynamic change of the state capacity,and derives the following proposition.In the middle and early Qing Dynasty,the state capacity and the rulers’ supervision ability were relatively strong.In this case,the rulers’ incentive costs were lower.Since the middle and late Qing Dynasty,with the declining of state capacity,the rulers had to pay a higher level of incentive to the participation of non-government forces in social governance.In order to further verify the above propositions,this paper constructs the social conflicts database and genealogy database in the Qing Dynasty,using empirical analysis methods to investigate the influence of clan network on social governance and its mechanism,which provides new empirical evidence for the transformation of social governance model in the Qing Dynasty.The research shows that after the mid-19 th century,clan network had a significant positive effect on local social governance.The stronger the clan network,the better the social governance.The results are still robust after considering the endogeneity problems of missing variables and reverse causality.Non-government forces represented by the clan network had irreplaceable advantages in easing social conflicts and maintaining social order.Under the background of the declining state capacity in the late Qing Dynasty,the clan network became the main force of local public goods provision and thus maintained social order by promoting local charity and education.The stability of local social order and the effective provision of public goods can be achieved even in the case of the declining state capacity.Furthermore,this paper explores the interaction between local officials and clans in economic disputes resolution in the Qing Dynasty through the analysis of clan rules and local officials’ judgments.Since the middle and late Qing Dynasty,as the state capacity declined and state legal control system fails,local disputes resolution relied more on non-government forces.On the one hand,the state recognized the legitimacy and compulsion of clan rules,which had stronger execution power.As the representative of customary law,the clan rules were the supplement and extension of the national law.On the other hand,in the county-level judicial practice of this period,the local officials consciously leave disputes resolution to non-government forces and the clans played an irreplaceable role as “mediator”,“witness” and “executioner”.This is another perspective to understand the transformation of social governance model in the Qing Dynasty.In terms of research perspective,this paper focuses on the changing process of social governance model in the Qing Dynasty,and presents the interaction between state power and non-government forces in different historical stages.From the perspective of public goods provision,this paper identifies the mechanism of clan network affecting social governance,providing a reasonable explanation for the stable social order in the late Qing Dynasty.It has enriched the empirical literature on clan network and economic development.In terms of research methods,this paper tries to combine quantitative analysis method with historical data in order to explore general historical laws.The valuable experience of non-government forces participating in social governance not only provides a reference for us to reexamine the current public good provision,but also provides a historical mirror for innovating the way of social governance and realize the effective cooperative governance of multiple subjects.The conclusion of this paper provides a new historical perspective and empirical evidence for understanding how China’s wisdom can be applied to realize the effective governance in modern China.