Phenomenon Research Of Elite Governance In Village Administrations

After the specification of the"agriculture, countryside, and peasants"issues in 2005, the state listed the construction of new socialist countryside as one of the top priorities of the 11th 5-year plan in 2006 with the purpose to promote the development in rural areas and improve peasant's living standard. On top of the emphasis on economic development, the reform and renovation of rural management system also have substantial significance. As a matter of fact, village governance is an important issue concerning the fate of chinese peasants and china's social development. The choice and application of governance mode have gradually become key factors in the development of rural public sectors and satisfaction of its residents'common needs. These factors also deeply influence the democratizing and legalizing process in the level of grass-root society and the realization of good governance in the rural areas.The legal mode of village governance is villager autonomy in contemporary china. However, in practice, elite governance prevails under the cover of villager autonomy. As the rural areas in china are now undergoing some dramatic economic and social transformation, elite governing mode is helpful in maintaining a sound village order, resource distribution, and public administration; it is also helpful in popularizing democratic, legal and modern governing concepts in rural communities to achieve villager's autonomy in a maximized way. Yet, elite governance itself has some unsurpassable flaws characterized by its power concentration and weak supervision system. In essence, it is still a system ruled by man, in contradiction to democratic, legal and modern governing concepts.Through the in-depth and systematic study on the elites in three villages located in xiaoyue town, this paper explores the general rules in elite governance and how to tap on its advantages to transfer the mode to the"villager autonomy". Based on the current situations of villager autonomy, we make a prediction of the developing trend of elite governance. Starting from the origin of the existing problems to the explanation of concepts, we analyze the influence of elite governance and propose a three-step advice to improve the existing situation: nourish the environment of elite governance----enforce the restriction mechanism in elite governance----realize the"villager autonomy"characterized by democratic, legal and organizational governance.In summary, the study on village governance must be based on the local specific circumstances; the choice of the mode needs to consider the village's reality and observe developing logic of politics, economy and culture. Therefore, we need to respect the existence of elite governance, recognize its important role, explore its inner rules and bring its potential into full play. Only by this way that well be able to take advantage of its positive role in contemporary village governance, promote the all-round social development and realize villager autonomy in a maximized way. At the same time, we shall have a clear understanding of the needs of our times and the limitation of elite governance, so that we could conduct a reasonable reform of it by integrating democratic, legal and modern organizational concepts, to conduct it towards a more democratic, more legal and more organized villager autonomy.