Civic Participation In Community Governance Of America

Community governance emphasizes that government, civil society and citizens should participate in community development together, develop the relationship of engagement, cooperation, negotiation and partnership and build up social grass-roots management system of which government is dominant, society, entrepreneurs, citizens and other various parts are participants. Civic participation is the essential requirement of community governance, which is closely connected with community governance. So that civic participation in community governance has become a valuable subject. Community governance has a long way to go to become localized if it is intended to become a practical model for China community development. So this essay chooses Manhattan of America as a research subject, expecting to sum up useful enlightenments for domestic civic participation from the experience to become localized.This article is divided into six parts.Part I:Introduction. The first part elaborates the research origin and significance of the subject, proposing the research issues. The second part sorts out current study from home and abroad, pointing out the characteristics and flaws of the study. The third part is about the researching content and methodology. The fourth part is about the innovations and flaws of this article. The last part is about relevant concepts. The definition and elaboration of some basic concepts and theories relevant to the article lays a theoretic foundation for the next parts.Part II:Theoretic analysis of civic participation in community governance. This part firstly introduces three typical world wide community governance models, then reveals the close relationship between community governance and civic participation, and at last elaborates the theoretic reason and practical value of civic participation in community governance. Systematic theoretic analysis lays a foundation for the next parts about case study.Part III:General introduction about community governance in America. Based on the theoretic analysis above, this article gives general introduction about community governance in America, including definition and three types of community, institution transformation of community governance, the content of the citizen governed community governance model and its features. Through the analysis of this part, we can have comprehensive understanding and grasping about general situation of community governance in America.Part Ⅳ:The general situation about community governance and civic participation of three different types of communities in America. To show the practice of America in detail, this part chooses three typical cities as examples (including Seattle, Portland and Greenbelt).Part Ⅴ:The case study—civic participation in community governance of Manhattan, America. This part not only contains main civic participation ways and fields in Manhattan, but also recent cases, vividly embodying the charms of civic participation.Part Ⅵ:The enlightenments to domestic civic participation. Including:the government changes the governance philosophy and guarantees the citizen rights of participation; rationalize four couples of relationships and broaden the space of civic participation; develop the qualification of positive citizens and improve citizens’ ability of participation; support the development of NGO and enrich the vector of civic participation.There is still a long process of self-analysis and selective learning in order to become localized if the picture of Manhattan is going to be copied. This article hopes to show the slight practice of civic participation to provide latter researchers with practical information and bring about deeper thought and exploration.