Transition Villages Asylum Network And Grassroots Governance Changes

For Students, power and governance are the two themes in the study on rural China. With the economic and social transitions in China from the beginning of the 1980s, the state-society relationship also follows changes, which influences power relations and process of governance in rural society. Then what changes happen to power relations in rural China? How do these changes bear upon rural governance? How to explain the deterioration of governance level in rural areas? Why do the village election institutions not improve the level of rural governance?To respond the questions, some analysts develop two approaches: the state-centered theory and the society-centered theory. The statist approach focuses on state institutions' roles in process of modernization involving two kinds of viewpoints. On the one hand, some students claim that local governments and incumbents gain more incentives to develop local economy under the reform of fiscal institution and power transformation toward state agents, which are regarded as "developmental state" according to the experiences from other East Asian states. On the other hand, some analysts challenging developmental state model argue that Chinese administrative institutions including cadre management and monitoring systems, personnel system reshape local agents' behaviors, which means local cadres' abuse of power over society. As the result, there are more and more social conflicts and contentious events in countryside. The state-centered theory is criticized for neglecting informal institutions' roles in grassroots governance by society-centered approach. The social approach from social capital theory emphasizes social norms and autonomic organizations values on rural governance. Thus from the social approach, to some extent, governance level in rural areas depends on amount of social capital available. The social-centered theory explains why there is maybe high-level governance for some areas with low-level economic performance, but it doesn't explain why there are different governance performances in the whole period for the same community. In addition, how marketization and urbanization impact on rural goverance is not exlpored. Therefore this study attempts to incorporate the two types of approaches into one framework-power relations network theory, that is to say, rural goverance and changes will be explained by this approach.In this study, power relations is defined as patron-client relations which are based on individual choice, resources exchange and network norms. The core point of power relations network theory is that network structure has great effect on resource mobilizaiton and collcetive action determining the supply of public goods and services in grassroots community. According to my investigations on T village, structural changes of clientelism network in rural area influence governance methods and process for the supply of public goods. The process of changes in detail is following:(Ⅰ) In the former period of Chinese transition, rural elites, losing the absolute control over distribution of economic resources acquire more power resources as local state-agents with the agricultural taxation and family-planning policies being implemented. Meanwhile, these resources and policies directly get involved in villagers' interests. Under the interaction between power elites and peasants, the single patron-client relation structure remains as the one in Maoist era. Thus being applied to public governance, such relation network structure is capable of keeping effectiveness of resources mobilization and collective action.(Ⅱ) In the late period of Chinese transition, social differentiation appears in rural area under the impact of marketization and urbanization which is characterized by the rise of businessmen as a group. Besides the social structural changes, central government also adjusts its policies toward villages, especially abolishing the agricultural taxation. Hence, under the interaction between market and state, the single clientelism relation network splits into three forms of patron-client relations which is involved in political elites-economic elites relation, economic elite-peasant relation and political elite-peasant relation. Trilateral clientelism network structures is unable to ensure effective collective action in the provision of public goods, thus influencing the governance level in rural areas.In a few words, from the statements above, we can get the core research hypothesis is that single relation network structure contributes more to resources mobilization and collective action for supplying public goods than plural network structures do. To some extent, relation network structure determines the level of governance in rual community. In the thesis, the research hypothesis is tested with qualitative data from fieldwork at T village.