Behind The Different Ballot: Community Control And Community Election

During the period of social transition, with the "Unit System" weakening and the rise of the community construction, the social function committed by the government or unit originally is released into urban community, the community has gradually become an important field of reflecting the relationship between the state and society. The important events that occur in the community can often reflect the interest relationship and power structure between the state and society. As an important event,community election reflects the relationship between the state and society.It is based on this consideration, the thesis is a case study from the community committee election in Jinan L Community. With the help of the sociology of practice and "The Process-Event Analysis" research strategy, it is based on the perspective of relationship between the state and society. In order to reveal the power order embodied in the election process, reflect the current situation of the urban grass-roots democracy, and expect to understand and grasp the overall social structure more precisely, by the depiction of the actual situation that the committee system is implemented, the thesis analyses the interactive process of different strategies that local government, community committee and residents use.For the whole frame, the thesis is divided into five chapters.The first chapter is introduction. It introduces the background, the theme, the literature review and the method of the research. Inspired by the "The Process-Event Analysis" research strategy from Professor Sun Liping,the thesis attempts to reveal the general relationship, structure and mechanism hiding behind the community election. The thesis which lays special emphasis on the angle of sociology uses field research method, collects data by the method of participant observation and non-structural visit to do research around the community election.The second chapter proposes the research thinking and the framework of analysis. It combs the core concept of the state and society and reviews the related theories and the empirical researches of the relationship between the state and society. The thesis proposes the research thinking:it analyses the relationship between the state and society in the dynamic analysis framework of community election. By stating the whole process of the community election, it depicts how the power administers control the election result by means of administrative power and making use of long-term good relationship with electorates and taking strategy of material return to electorates. It reveals the entire process of deep logical power, and offer the dynamic perspective of the complexity that the relationship between the state and the society in the grass-roots societyThe third chapter is the control power in "the Process-Event":the result of the different ballot. Firstly, it introduces the background of the community, and then it depicts the whole process of the community election:the primary preparation of the community election, the control of the candidate list, the elaborate establishment of the leading group for community election, the construction process of relationship with electorates and the creation of the result of the community election.The fourth chapter is the practical process of the community election:the construction of the power order. This part mainly analyzes the construction process of the power order from the community election. After the starting of the community election, in order to fulfill their goals, the actors prompt the whole incident to their own direction by the different ways of behavior interaction that bases on the cooperation on the basis of resource exchange and administrative power.The fifth chapter is conclusion and discussion. It extends the construction process of power order from the community election to the analysis of the relation between the state and the society in urban grass-roots society. From the analysis on the case study, we conclude:the community election is only a programmed surface contact of the state and the society, we don't see the growth of grass-roots society. Instead, it is a manifestation of the state effectively shaping to the society.