The Masses In The Election

The direct election of the urban community as an important content of the grass-roots democracy, is not only an effective way to increase residents’ awareness of democracy, but also a solid force promote the grassroots democratization process. The communal elections as the most important prerequisite of democracy in the community are helpful for promoting grassroots democratic self-government to move forward. During the specific operation of the community direct election, residents are more active than they were in the past, but there are still some gaps reflecting the subjectivity of the citizen participation. We should face the plasticity and complexity of community participation. Thus, the article looks at the perspective of residents participation to discuss the attitudes and behavior of residents in the community direct election process, trying to find civil society growth pathways."Big vision, small see" is the main method of empirical research. The research is based on2012Wuhan Jianghan District neighborhood election of directly elected community, using the case study method, starting from the micro, trying to analyze the hidden motives through detailed analysis of residents’ attitudes and behavior in the election process in a complete description of the whole election. Analyze the behavior of the residents in the community direct election at every stage, from the passive position of the propaganda and mobilization phase, the contradictions between the concept of powers and responsibilities, voter registration and candidate election to the "prosperity" of the final campaign rally. It turns out that the residents in community elections is negative governance "masses" but not "citizen" interested in public affairs. Neighborhood residents objectively promote the successful completion of the work in the communal elections, but that does not mean residents have a true democratic life. The asylum-dependency vertical participation in the network cannot endogenous public spirit, nor can we promote the conversion of the "masses" to "citizen". The fundamental reason why grassroots democracy in China repeated a tough time lies in the lack of the social structure of the civil society. So the country should step out of fear of societies, construct the civil society actively, foster social organizations and civic awareness, and improve the degree of organization of residents. At the same time focus on the development of civil society in the underlying in promoting democracy.