A Study On Petition Motivations Of Village Committee Election From Rational Choice Perspective

Along with the reform of history and development of the era, villagers’ autonomy, as one of the most important parts of democratic election, develops in a deep-going way. Democratic election, especially direct election, has become an inevitable topic of the era and a measurement of grass-roots democracy. However, in pace with the evolution of Chinese rural economic, political and social life, new problems, such as the defects in program operation, bribery, factionalism competition and government intervention, bring more petition letters. Under the background of villagers’autonomy, this paper gives a detailed interpretation on village committee election, especially the process and positive&negative effects of direct election. Taking Coleman’s rational choice theory as its foundation, this paper discusses on the characteristics of petition motivation, different molds of petition organizations forged by different motivations, and makes analysis from two perspectives, which include economic rationality and value rationality. In addition to theory research, it also conducts a research on specific problems, petition motivations and psychological moment appeared in H Town’s direct election. As to the motivations which may cause negative effects, this thesis proposes to carry out three measures to prevent petition behavior from boiling into breaking news. Firstly, transform working ideas from public appealing to leadership investigating, from hindsight to foresight, from leading department alone to joint forces. Secondly, improve work mechanism including leadership responsibility, contradiction release and decentralized administration. Thirdly, govern from grass-roots units with well-run network and legal system.