The Role Of The State In Village Committee Elections, The Costs And Benefits

This thesis adopts the research method of the case study, using the social exchange theories as the basic theory frame to study the problem of villager commission election. Regarding the social interactive process between the participants in the villager commission election as the process of social exchange, every participant pursues reward and pays much attention to the cost and income. The participants in the villager commission election mainly include the state (including the high political power and grass-roots political power), the village elites and common voters. The cost and income of each participant can't have nothing to do with the participant's role (namely the outside dynamic state performance of the social status), so this article describes the role of state in the villager commission election first .Through investigation, I find that our state (the national political power)has been in predominant position(incorporating the strong points of " legislator", "role enforcing the law", "supervisor" in its whole body) in the villager commission election, and in current villager commission election, the state has further strengthened its predominant position. The performance of state's strengthening its predominant position is as folio wings: One is to emphasize that the Communist Party of China should lead the current villager commission election; Secondly, in political power of the county class, the Organization Department of the Communist Party of China is in charge of the current villager commission election; Thirdly, an important rigid election index is that each member of the two commissions should hold two posts (one post is in the villager commission and the other is in the village party branch commission of the Communist Party of China), and the election result also attains the expectation of the state; Fourthly ,our state advanced the date of the current election unilaterally without reaching consensus with other participants, which didn't cause other participants' objection and even realization. According to the standpoint of the social exchange theories, the cause of the state's leading villager commission election is to acquire a certain reward (this also matches the principle of who predominates, who benefits"), and those who benefit also need to pay a certain cost certainly. Some scholars have studied the cost and income of the state's participating in the villager commission election, but their analyses are not complete and thorough because of lacking the emollient theories to guide their study. This article views that thestate's costs in the villager commission election include time which in Peter M. Blau's opinion is the most important cost in addition to the economic costs, political costs (the main political cost is that the authority of the grass-roots political power will descend as a result of facing the legal and illegal challenge from country society caused by the villager commission election) that the above-mentioned scholars have emphasized; This article argues that the state's incomes in the villager commission election include social approval, authority legalization, social stability, social unity in addition to the economic incomes, political incomes( only referring to democratization progress) that the above-mentioned scholars have emphasized; the high political power can also acquire obedience from the grass-roots political power ,and the reason for the grass-roots political power to obey is that it can acquire enough reward from the obedience; Finally, this thesis points out that the grass-roots political power which undertakes the political cost caused by the villager commission election has a variety of ways to prevent its authority from descending, and we can suppose that the grass-roots political power acquires its income in those ways. Those ways include emphasizing that the village party branch commissions are the leading nucleus of the villages, promoting that each member of the two commissions should hold two posts (one post is in the villager commission and the other is in the village party branch commission of the Communist Party of China), holding the power of controlling the village cadre's wages tightly, seizing the village cadre's "small plaits"(mistakes), etc. Among them, promoting that each member of the two commissions should hold two posts (one post is in the villager commission and the other is in the village party branch commission of the Communist Party of China) is "one stone many birds" measures. After studying the costs and incomes of the state's participating in the villager commission election, we can discover that the incomes that the state acquires is considerable, because the state still has acquired many other social rewards on condition that it has made enough compensation for its political costs.