The Research On The Legitimacy Of The Power At Rural Grass-roots Level In China

Political legitimacy is a major topic in the theory of the political development. It pay close attention to how to keep the durability of social order, characterized with the public voluntary identity, support and obey, which lays the foundation of a steady and persistent political rule. From the historical perspective, we can see that all the reigns need to obtain the identity and the support from the public so as to lower the ruling cost and contribute to the political order.The theory of political legitimacy has two schools according to the development of legitimacy theory .One is empiricism-oriented theory, which believes that the political legitimacy is based on the public support and affiliation. The other is standard-oriented theory, which thinks that the political legitimacy should be based on social justice. The foundation of the political legitimacy should include ideology, system and validity.We can make out that the legitimacy of the rural grass-roots political power in our country has experienced two stages analyzed with the legitimacy theory. Ideology had constructed principal basis of the legitimacy at rural grassroots level after the establishment of the new china. The power legitimacy at the rural grassroots turned to resort to the efficiency of power after the reform in 1978. The economic achievements of the political power began to provide the main foundation for the agreement of the village to the government. However, with the deepening of the reform,they gradually can not take the main responsibility of constructing the power legitimacy. People's sense of identity in rural grassroots political power gradually decreased. The political power of the rural grassroots level faced potential crises.The acquisition of political legitimacy is a dynamic process,and changes in the legality of resources is inevitable. The Third Plenum of the Eleventh,China's comprehensive national strength has greatly improved ,but people's sense of identity of rural grass-roots political power has been weakened. The rural grass-roots political power faces the crisis of political integration, the crisis of political participation, political and cultural crisis, the grass-roots government functions crisis, the crisis in the development of grass-roots organizations, and the crisis of corruption at the present stage.Currently, the legitimacy of the political power at rural grass-roots level is most lack of institutional resources. On the one hand, the existing system is not perfect; On the other hand, the system has been in practice difficult to operate in accordance with established rules. So we should take the transformation of government functions as an opportunity to construct new legitimacy of the political power at rural grassroots level by strengthening Party leadership system in rural areas and Township people's congress system and advancing to the villagers'self-government as the core system construction.