Suitable Scale:Study On The Reasonable Unit Of Achieving Villager Autonomy Effectively

In 2014 and 2015, the Central Committee’s Document No. One put forward that pilot villager autonomy should be expanded with village group as the basic unit and continuously improved with community as the basic unit. Thus, in academia, it has been a heated issue in what kind of unit and in how large scale to conduct villager autonomy. In view of this, by virtue of survey data in 2013 about 3645 peasants of 231 administrative villages in 22 provinces nationwide, supplied by "Village Observation" of Institute of Chinese Rural Studies in Central China Normal University, this paper objectively analyses villager autonomy’s performance under the circumstances of different scales from such three aspects as population scale, territory scale and population density.According to this paper, it is not true for the scale of villager autonomy that the smaller the better, neither the larger the better, but necessary to judge the scale in accordance with specific conditions of villager autonomy. On the whole, the villagers assembly and the villagers’ representatives assembly are not affected when the population scale becomes larger. However, when the population scale becomes larger, it may be influenced that villagers focus on village affairs’ publicity and participate in village meetings. As for the territory scale, the organization of villagers assembly and villagers’ participation seem not to be affected for the expansion of village area. With regard to the population density, the larger the population density is, the more difficult calling a villagers assembly is. Meanwhile, it is relatively inconvenient for villagers to take part in it, but the frequency of calling a villagers’representatives assembly increases. Therefore, the population scale seems to exercise a greater influence on villager autonomy than the other one. The increase in population number and population density may do damage to the direct participation in villagers’ autonomous affairs.In different regions such as the north and the south, the scale that the villager autonomy seeks seems not the same. This paper discovers that in the north of China, the change of population scale or territory scale has a relatively small impact on villager autonomy. In the south of China, the larger the population number is, or the larger the population density is, the fewer the number of calling a villagers assembly is, but convening a villagers’ representatives assembly becomes better. At the same time, in villages in mount area, with expansion of population scale, territory area or population density, the organizations of villagers assembly and villagers’ representatives assembly and villagers’ participation both become relatively worse. Visibly, in the south, the larger the population scale is, the more inconvenient the villagers’ direct participation becomes, but the more relatively active the indirect democracy is. Meanwhile, in the mount area, smaller villages in size are more suitable to effectively perform villager autonomy.