The Research On The Election Question In The Villager Autonomy

In the late 1970s and the early 1980s, China implemented the household contract responsibility system in villages. The original "three-level ownership, team-based" people's commune management system collapsed, and the system of villagers'autonomy gradually formed. The system has been proved to be a useful exploration to the construction of the socialist democracy under the leadership of the party and the government. It is an active choice to the forms of socialist democracy with Chinese characteristics. One of the villages'autonomy's essential contents is to give villagers the direct election right to their own villagers'committees. Villagers election is a realistic basis and prerequisite for the villagers'autonomy, and also is the fundamental guarantee. It strengthens the construction of the rural grassroots democracy, as its important content and form; enriches the practice of democratic electoral system, perfects the exploration to the theory of the democratic elections with Chinese characteristics. Since the "Village Committee Organization Law," was formally promulgated and implemented in 1998, active practice and exploration have been made in villages throughout the country in the electoral process. Though we have made some progress indeed, meanwhile, there are many issues in the system and practice that affect the implementation of villagers'autonomy and rural social stability.This paper is divided into six parts, discussing the village elections in China: The first part introduces the significance of this topic and research review,The main contents ,theoretical basis and research methods. The sencnd part analyzes the coming up of the system of villagers'autonomy and the introduction of village elections, summarizes the historical evolution of village elections, then, describes its connotation, basic principles. The third part discusses the problems in village elections and the consequences. And the main problems are as follows: Villagers'lack of participation; some grass-roots cadres'insufficient understanding of the election; the intervention of family power; breach of procedural law, bribery election, assignment election, appointment election and the breach action of election in the electoral process.; the imperfectness of law; the inability to guarantee the right to vote for mobile population, women's weak election awareness for participation and low elected rate in the election, etc. Those problems passively affect the implementation of villagers'autonomy and the construction of democracy and the rule of law; undermine the stability of rural society and the building of new socialist countryside; impact the party's rural image and ruling position. The fourth part analyzes the cause of those problems, including economic reasons, political and legal reasons, and socio-cultural ones. The economic reasons are its development level's constraint and the economic interests'influence; Political and legal reasons exist , such as the conflicts between party committee and village committee, the improper interventions in the township government, the imperfection of the legal system and the household registration system constraints; social and cultural reasons , for example, the residual feudalism impact it profoundly , family awareness is inappropriately strong, legal consciousness is weak and people lack the concept of democratic habits.The fifth part puts forward the strategy basing on the former analysis about those problems, which includes strengthening the party's and government's leadership on the election; developing the rural economy to strengthen the material basis for villagers to participate elections; straightening out the relations among the township government, grassroots organizations and village committees in the electoral process; strengthening the publicity to the revised "Village Committee Organization Law," to villagers'awareness of democracy and laws: improving Village Committee Organization Law; improving the village election supervision mechanism; promoting the modes of election to make sure that the elections go on wheels.The last is the conclusions of this research.