The Deviances Of Operation From System: A Study Of Public Power Supervision In Village Communities

With the bankruptcy of the People's Commune in the early 1980s, a new system of "township government and village administration" has been constituted in China's rural areas. The state begins to withdraw its overall control over and intervention in the rural society. The village communities begin to autonomously dispose their own resources and carry out their administration on their own will. This has, on the one hand, promoted and developed the autonomy of the grass-root communities in rural areas and on the other hand gradually made vital the issue of how to guarantee the scientific and efficient exercise of the public power in the village communities. Given the remaining strong impact of long-standing feudal despotism in China's rural area, it is quite likely that the public power will be spoiled as some instruments to meet the personal interests for a few people. Fortunately, our practice has proved that the establishment of a scientific system, in which public power supervision is implemented in village communities to regulate the exercise of power and monitor the efficiency of power exercise, is an effective measure to prevent and correct the deviances and disorders which arise out of the exercise of power in grass-root communities in rural areas. Although a preliminary system has been formed so far to supervise the public power exercise in village communities in China, it turns out in our practice that the operation of this supervision system has been widely deviated to a more or less degree. There is a big gap between the operation of supervision in practice and the stipulation in the law articles. This investigation into the public power supervision in the rural communities in this paper has gone beyond the limitation of most other studies in this field, which focus on the villagers' supervision over the power exercised by village committees only from the perspective of "self-government of villagers". A systematic survey of the system arrangement for public power supervision in rural communities is conducted from the perspective of village administration. It also analyzes the deviances which arise in the operationprocess of public power supervision system in current rural communities and furthermore explores the main reasons behind the deviances. Finally, some strategies are formulated on how to reduce the deviances in the operation of supervision system.This thesis is divided into six parts.Part One analyzes the constitution of public power supervision system in current rural communities, centering on the target, main body and content of supervision based on my analysis of this research background.Part Two conducts a systematic survey into the system arrangement for public power supervision in the current village communities from the perspective of main body of public power supervision in the village communities. A brief comment is also made on the current system.Part Three elaborates the deviances of supervision operation in practice from its stipulation in the law articles.Part Four categorizes all those deviances into positive and negative on the base of two dimensions: "conformation to the system arrangement" and "practical effects of supervision". Their impacts on village administration are also discussed respectively.Part Five analyses the concrete causes of deviances of public power supervision from system which prevail in the current village communities.Part Six formulates some relevant strategies to reduce the deviances of public power supervision from system in the process of practical operation in village communities.