The Influence Of The Clan In The New Era Of Chinese Farmers' Political Participation

Farmers'political participation and lineage are two factors which cannot be ignored in current political development in rural China. Lineage is the most widely spread and far-reaching community of farmers in Chinese traditional society, and has impacted the process of Chinese history deeply. Since the reform and opening-up, lineage has rejuvenated and influenced on political field of many parts of rural areas in China. Political participation is an important part of democratic politics, and a sign of the degree of political democracy of a society. Farmers'political participation is related to the political stability and political development in rural China. This paper use literature research method to review the documents related to farmers'political participation and lineage, and analysis the influence of lineage on farmers'political participation of the New-era.The introduction mainly presents a comparatively systematic introduction of the question, the significance of the research, the explanation of the key words, an overview of the current research literature on the topic of farmers'political participation and the lineage, and the research methodology.The first chapter describes the situation of farmers'political participation in the new period. The development of farmers'political participation in China includes the increase of the autonomy, the expanding of extent and intensity, and the innovation of farmer's political participation. But there are also some issues, including the low-level of the participation, the low level of institutionalization, and the high cost and the sense of inefficiency which due to the lack of political participating ability. The second chapter discusses the influence of lineage's rejuvenation to farmers'political participation from the two aspects: institutionalized political participation and non-institutionalized political participation. On the aspect of institutionalized political participation, lineage impacts villagers'self-governance through improving the competition and impartiality of election, but lineage can also manipulate and distort the election, and lineage also impacts village officials behavior; lineage can inhibit, regulate, organize or mobilize farmers'participation in"letter and visit"; lineage has a weak impact on farmers'participation in the election of people's congress in rural grass-roots.; lineage has certain influence to the construction of country grass-roots party organization. On the aspect of non-institutionalized political participation, the lineage is a force to mobilize and organize farmers, which can stimulate the occurrence of non-institutionalized political participation. The third chapter analysis the reasons for lineage influence farmers'political participation. And the reasons include: Institutionalized political participation cannot fully content the need of farmers'political participation; lineage is farmers'common benefit community and has the competence of organizing or mobilizing farmers'participation, and help farmers to overcome the barriers in the process of political participation; the characteristics of farmers'political participation, which includes the limited rationality and elite mobilization. The forth chapter assesses the mechanism how lineage influence farmers'political participation. The assessment carries out mainly from two aspects: lineage organizes and mobilizes farmers'political participation through consanguinity and lineage's elite; lineage provides convenient channels for farmers'political participation depending on the association with formal organization. The fifth chapter mainly evaluates the nature of the influence of lineage on farmers'political participation, and the lineage's importance in the factors impacting farmers'political participation. The epilogue discusses lineage's historical changes and the influence of lineage on farmers'political participation.