Research On The Resilience OfVillage Cadres’ Discretion In The Squeezing Situation

This article takes the land recovery of L Village in Hubei Province as a case study,using discretion as an indicator,introducing concepts related to resilience,and using institutional analysis and development framework as the research tool of this article.It conducts in-depth research and collects data through literature review,in-depth interviews,and participatory observation methods.On this basis,the interaction process between village cadres and township cadres,as well as between village cadres and villagers,is described in detail,and the actions taken by village cadres in the context of policy implementation in which they face both the assessment pressure of the township government and the implementation resistance of villagers refusing to give up land under the circumstances of weak mobilization ability and limited resources are analyzed.The issue of rural social governance is combined with the discretion of village cadres,This paper analyzes the internal mechanism of village cadres’ behavior in detail,and explains the behavioral logic of village cadres.The main structure of the paper consists of three parts.Firstly,it introduces the background of land reclamation,the village cadres joining the land collection team to obtain the status of "street bureaucrat" to implement land collection work,and the villagers adopting various methods to resist.Under the influence of these external variables,the stage of action is formed;Secondly,it introduces the process of interaction between village cadres as actors and other actors in such an action situation,that is,in a squeezed situation,village cadres face their narrow discretionary power space and various obstacles in the village,expand their capacity upward,strive to expand their discretionary power,and dredge down the use of currently limited discretionary power to carry out land collection work;Finally,it is introduced that village cadres have adjusted some general institutional rules through previous efforts,and their discretion has been expanded to ultimately complete the task of land collection.The resilience of their discretion has effectively responded to the pressing situation,resolved operational difficulties,resolved external pressures,and reshaped the authority of the village.Research has found that the behavior of village cadres is influenced by multiple factors,and the squeezing action situation faced when executing administrative tasks of land expropriation compresses the discretionary space of village cadres,causing their actions to fall into a dilemma.Village cadres have generated tremendous momentum to overcome this dilemma,striving to expand their discretionary power.The local social rules provide support for village cadres to seek the expansion of their discretionary power.After a series of efforts,village cadres have greater discretionary space in work schedule arrangement,compensation standard determination,and personnel allocation.This proves that discretionary power has a certain degree of resilience and can be adjusted and changed to cope with external factors’ interference.The flexibility of discretion has provided assistance for the work of village cadres,who have successfully completed the task of land acquisition.Under the comprehensive influence of these factors,there is a phenomenon of village cadres raising compensation standards and adopting a series of flexible behaviors to promote their work.