Township Governance Under The "One-vote Veto": The Maintenance Of Social Stability In Town "A"

Most of China's central policies involved in affairs of political stability and national unity inevitably depend on local governments. To ensure the central government's decrees are carried out without fail and maintain the overall work, the political performance assessment serves as a crucial basis for the advancement of government officers. Originally, local government wants to develop political achievements contest system which performances as an important criterion of government officer promotion. Dishearteningly, counter-productive situation comes out. In order to get so-called outstanding achievements to win promotion, local officials ridiculously act on their own. Since local government may be disqualified in one-vote veto, to satisfy all conditions of one-vote veto becomes the priority of local government. Currently, under the pressure of political performance assessment, local governments mainly take the responsibility to maintain social stability. Take the practice of a town of Jiangxi Province for instance. To ensure social stability, its government handled the contradictions among the people via money-oriented measure which obviously was beyond its normal level of authority. At the same time, aim to preventing petitioners bypass local authorities, governments mobilized petitioners'relatives to persuade them to end petition. However, if the petition is caused by some officers, those officers would throw money at the problem to achieve a peace settlement. Meanwhile petition becomes a good even only way for husbandmen to pursue their demands because they know government will finally solve it to maintain social stability. Maintaining social stability it absolutely does great harm to social stability. Given the above analysis, one-vote veto is not a good preference to maintain social stability, better political system is expected.