The Development Of The Urban Neighborhood Committee In The Structural Interaction Between State And Society

Compared to rural areas, because of the nature and impact of the city, and the actual process of reform and opening factors and so on, the stability and development in the city have become increasingly prominent. With the deepening of reform, China has made great development and progress in the city, and at the same time the city has accumulated more and more contradictions. Therefore, how to ensure stability and development in urban society has become a very important and serious issue in front of the Party, the government and the people. From the development of various organizations which play important roles in Chinese urban society, the urban neighborhood committee as the fundamental autonomous organization in city, is able to produce a unique and extremely convenient and practical impact of organizational resources. From the founding of the beginning, the neighborhood in the city has undertook grass-roots mobilization of the country, mobilizing and integrating the backbone of the masses. But with the development of reform and opening, diversification of economic and social development , the pursuit of diverse people and housing reform , the development of a large number of social organizations such as the property and the owners and the commission, the impact which the neighborhood plays as the dual role of the state agent and the committee is declining down. From the beginning of the founding's backbone strength to today's"tasteless"and awkward position, we can see that the changed role of the neighborhood is not only reflecting the change of urban management system, but also reflecting the underlying interaction between state and society.In this paper, according to the theory of state and society and supported by descriptive case study method, the author visits three different but representative communities in Kaifeng as following: the Jiying community which represents the new residential community in this city, the Minxin community which represents the old community and the middle street of Songmen community which represents the community in urban and rural junctional areas. According to the history and realities development of the three communities, combined with the important role in which neighborhood committee has played and is still playing, and compared it with the models of Shanghai, Jianghan, Shenyang, Qingdao, we can come to the conclusion that the neighborhood not only takes the tasks from the state, but it also makes its efforts to take the burden from grassroots and the role of a self-government body. But this autonomy is still a autonomy under the control of the state, and it is just a state-led type of autonomy, which the organizations of Chinese Communist Party play a major role in it. The process which the neighborhood committee's function has developed is reflection of the process of the interaction between state and society. Moreover, in this process, the state still dominates, leads and controls the society, especially in the urban grassroots. But this control is not the use of coercive power as before, but a more subtle and more flexible grass-roots governance.This paper starts from four parts to discuss as following:Part I: In the introduction and the first chapter, on the basis of describing the background and meaning of the study of the neighborhood committee, and in the status of existing research results and comprehensive analysis, the author illustrates the theory of relationship between state and society which is behind at the neighborhood in order to pave a theory way to the following writing.Part II: In the second chapter, through reviewing the history of neighborhood's emergence and development, the author thinks that from the beginning of the birth, the neighborhood was the institution which was the embedded product in city, rather than the needs of the citizens. And the ups and downs of the neighborhood are completely controlled by the state's power.Part III: In the third chapter, through the field research in Kaifeng's three representative communities, from the studying and observing the neighborhood's organizational structure and operation, the election of the neighborhood's members, the type and solutions of public affairs in community and other aspects, we can come to the conclusion that in the current building, although neighborhood is in the direction of self-government, the powers of state and government are still indispensable. However, the intervention of the state and government in the community is different from the past and traditional order-type control, and become a guide, a more flexible service and supervision of development of urban society which is under the intentional guide of the state.Part IV: In the fourth chapter, by the above aspects of studying of the neighborhood's history and realities, and compared to the governance models in today's urban communities, the author proposes that the future direction of the neighborhood should not be as an administrative department but a political one. That is, we should not only take the neighborhood as the main part in urban grassroots of democracy, but also as the grass-roots management tools, which is an intermediary to urban citizen's participating in politics and self-management and an important subject of citizenship training. At last, the author proposes the ways to achieve this new role.