Cultivating Social Capital: A Solution To The Internal Basis Of The Dilemma Of The Villages' Democratic Governance

Villages' democratic governance in today's China is stranded by the dilemma of collective action of the villagers. To a great degree, the internal basis of the villages predetermines the performance of the institution and governance. The concept and theory of social capital have a tremendous explanation power to the governance dilemma of villages. In the villages of today' China, the traditional social capital are vanishing day by day, while modern social capital cannot be built up in one day. The shortage of the stock of social capital as a resource of governance has placed the villages' governance into multiply predicament. The effective governance calls for cultivating modern social capital as an importantiapproach.The first part raises the issues for this study and reviews the theoretic approaches in the past. Rational Choice theory and New Institutionalism both have their reasonability for their own parts, but both have to face the flaws in the explanations. As a alternative approach, social capital has a increasingly powerful influence in the explanation of the dilemma of collective action.The second part explores the history and status quo of the villages' social capital in China. No matter what role the traditional social capital has played in villages' democratic governance, it has been vanishing beyond retrieval in the rural China's transformation to modernization. At the same time, however, there is no sign for modern social capital to grow vigorously.The third part tries to examine the relationship between the social capital and the democratic governance of the villages by putting social capital into the process of governance. One can see that during its vanishing the traditional social capital act on villages' governance both positively and negatively. The more effective governance rely on the building of modern social capital.The fourth part pays attention to the approaches to build up the modern social capital. What connect closely with those is the characters, limitations and the main factors for the forming of the villages' social capital in China. Cultivating villages' social capital needs a systematic endeavor from different quarters.