A Study On Villager’s Autonomy From The Perspective Of Governance Theory

Thirty years of reform and opening up have witnessed dramatic changes in the rural areas of China. Urbanization, industrialization, and informatization have played a great role in the development of cities, meanwhile have exerted huge influence on rural areas. The rural areas have stepped into a new period of development. However,this kind of new development conflicts with traditional villager autonomy system,which has lead a series of problems of disharmony relations between villagers and village committees, or between village Party branch and village committee. At present,the political function of villager autonomy system has apparently been weakened,while its management function has apparently been improved. The better role villager autonomy system plays, the more hugely it will promote the development of society,economy, culture, and democracy of rural areas. Otherwise, it will hinder the scientific and healthy development of rural areas. Consequently, in order to meet the needs of social areas in new area, new theoretical guidance and adjustment for villager autonomy system is needed, and that is “governance theory” in the present thesis.The requirement of “realize the modernization of governance system and governance capacity” has been put forward at the Third plenary Session of the 18 th Central Committee of CPC, which means our country is transforming its function from social management to social governance. As a part of social governance, rural areas also need to intensify its self-management with the idea of governance, thus implementing villager autonomy under the theory of management. Mandao village of Lantian county of Shaanxi province, which lies in suburbs of Xi’an, has been adopting villager autonomy as its mode of management since it was written into the constitution in 1982. For over 30 years, villager autonomy has played a large role in Mandao village, and has exerted huge influence on the development of its society and economy as well. Whereas, with the influence of urbanization, great changes have been taken placed on the social structure, villagers’ comprehensive qualities, and economy of Mandao village. The social structure on which the traditional villager autonomy has been based has been weakened, and even has hindered the social andeconomical development of Mandao village to some extent. As a result of this, in order to adapt the development of Mandao village, it has to be changed.This thesis contains the following parts: part one is the introduction of the whole thesis, which introduces the research background, significance and methodologies and summarizes current researches home and abroad; part two explores the concept and relevant theories about villagers’ autonomy; part three elaborates the concept about governance theory, relevant theories and new development of governance theory home and abroad, introduces the basic state and current situation of villagers’ autonomy of Mandao village in Lantian county, Shan’an Xi province, then sorts out the questions during the process of villagers’ autonomy and analyses the reason in detail; in light of above questions and reasons, part four puts forwards some specific countermeasures and suggestions; part five generalizes the whole thesis and concludes at the experience and teaching of villagers’ autonomy and points some expectations about its future development.