The Role Transformation Of Village Cadres From The Perspective Of Historical Institutionalism

With the deepening of poverty alleviation and the strategy of rural revitalization,village cadres play an increasingly important role in rural governance in the new era.However,in recent years,the tendency of village cadre administration has become more and more serious,and the corruption cases of "micro-power" in grass-roots governance have shown a high trend,which has aroused widespread concern of the whole society.Academic circles have done a lot of research on the types of village cadres roles,the conflict of village cadres' roles and the transformation of their roles,but lack of research on how to promote the transformation of village cadre roles from the institutional level.Based on this paper will focus on the role transformation of village cadres in the process of villager autonomy practice.This paper takes the competitive election of S village in Gansu Province as an example,and conducts a survey on the election of the 9th Village Committee of S village through qualitative interviews and participatory observation."Old institution-Environmental Change-actors" is the core framework of historical institutionalism to analyze institutional change.The change of villager electoral system affects the role transformation of village cadres.The role transformation of village cadres reflects the evolution of villagers' electoral system.Using this analytical framework,we try to answer the question of the role transformation of village cadres in the change of village electoral system,and also answer the question of why competitive elections occur and how they affect after they occur.The case study shows that: First,In order to fulfill the task of higher authorities,the grass-roots government intervened in electing agents for a long time,which accorded with their will,and then formed the villagers electoral system under the leadership of administration.The village cadres produced under this system have two characteristics: one is to be elected by the way of "appointment system",the other is to have the characteristics of "profit-making".The role of "government agent" of village cadres not only causes contradictions between cadres and masses,but also causes corruption of village cadres.Second,After abolishing agriculture,the country shifted from drawing resources from the countryside to importing resources,resulting in a series of changes in the internal and external environment of villages.Changes in the internal and external environment include the central government's increasing investment in agriculture,the gradual landing of election rules,the more intensive interests of villages,and the significant enhancement of villager awareness of democracy and human rights.Third,the electoral arena of village committees includes state and social actors.The two types of actors have different motivations and behavioral logic.Competitive elections not only restrain the intervention of the grass-roots government,make the village electoral system change from the old system under the leadership of administration to the new system under the leadership of villager autonomy,but also force the candidates to pay attention to the interests of the villagers,thus putting pressure on the transformation of the role of village cadres.Social actors who actively participated in the elections tried to change village leaders through the new system led by villagers autonomy and promote the role of village cadres from "profit-making" to "protection".