Urban Community Self-governance In China During Economy Transition-Based On A Community Case

As an empirical research on a typically mixed urban community in Beiing city, by describing the actors' power and responsibility, the relationship among them and the community residents' basis for community self-governance in present community governance during Economy Transition, the thesis aims at revealing the issues in the present community governance, and further resolving them and seeking for the direction in urban community governance in the future. The case, selected in this thesis, is a typically mixed urban community, with a complicated component of the city residents, some of them obtaining their houses from their units (danwei), and some others purchasing from the market, some migrations from the rural without their own houses in this urban community, and also with many problems existing in most China urban cities, such as the unemployment, the aging, and the insurance for the disadvantage. The thesis deems that it is easier, by case study, to observe the process of the community governance change from the administrative management to community self-governance, and further to get a perspective of the characteristics of the relations between the nation state and the society, and also the relations' trends in the future.The thesis aims at providing empirical research, so it adopts cast study, by literature review, individual interviews, participative observation, survey questionnaire, and statistics analysis, to get a qualitative description of the governance actors' responsibility and interactive relationship among them under the present institutional framework, and also to get a quantitative analysis of the residents' attitude to community self-governance, and the characteristics of their behavior pattern. The thesis uses the governance theory, one of the mainstream theory of the public management, as the theory framework, emphasizing that the community governance will become an interactivemulti-actors cooperation model with the complicated,dynamic and multified.Based on the case study, the thesis concludes that the administrative force from the government in the present community governance is stronger than the force from the community residents, and the community self-governing organization often takes two kinds of responsibility, one of which is to meet the demand of the government, and the other is to meet the residents, but the latter one is much weaker. Firstly, the orientation of the responsibility for each actors and the relationship among them in the community governance is not distinct enough; secondly, the community governance is of more administrative, and less self-governing, although it has become, to a very low degree, self-governing. In the community governance, the government is the dominant player, while the Residents' Committee, a self-governing organization according to the law, just acts as a quasi administrative office in the community, but without any administrative power; thirdly, there is no residents' basis for community self-governance now. On the one hand, the residents are not inclined to think there are many public affairs required to be self-governed; on the other hand, the residents have no strong willing to participate into and manage the public affairs, and still hope to be done by the government, while not the market or the NPOs or the residents themselves. The thesis argues that the government-oriented community governance is, to a large degree, the legacy of the planned economy. Firstly, that the government's strong intervention into the society formed under the planned economy still exists, and the strategic importance of the community makes the government inclined to control the community directly and strongly, and no more space left for the other community organizations, especially the NPOs in community; secondly, that thegovernment's strong intervention into the community, the residents' strong inclination to depend on the government and the units, and the margin of the service provided by the community, all restrain the residents' par...