Chinese Journal of Sociology

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Tied CheckandBalance: Operational Mechanism of Grassroots Organizations’ Power

Author: Chen Feng, Center of Chinese Rural China Governance, Huazhong University of Science and Technology.   

  1. Author: Chen Feng, Center of Chinese Rural China Governance, Huazhong University of Science and Technology.
  • Online:2012-01-20 Published:2012-01-20
  • Contact: Author: Chen Feng, Center of Chinese Rural China Governance, Huazhong University of Science and Technology. E-mail:chenfeng0110@163.com
  • About author:Chen Feng, Center of Chinese Rural China Governance, Huazhong University of Science and Technology.
  • Supported by:

    This research was supported by the National Social Science Foundation of China （11BSH024）.

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Abstract:

 The nature of the grassroots politics and the logic of rural governance are the keys to the understanding of the formation and change of the current rural order, but they also help to understand China’s unique mode of state governance. This paper explores the internal mechanism in the informal or semiformal practice of grassroots governance and its social and value bases. The study has found that the positions of village organizations in the state power system constitute part of the external conditions and pressure of the rural governance, but the power of these village organizations in their practice of general and semiformal governance is rooted in rural society itself. Village cadres govern the villagers mainly through bonds tied with interests and emotions to fulfill their governance goal; the villagers, on the other hand, try to balance the village cadres’ control through bonds tied with their various obligation and rights, especially in the form of jointresponsibilities. It is this twoway relationship between cadres and villagers in the governance that has established the overall balance between rights and obligations, and that has shaped the current rural social order, that is, "tied checkandbalance." The atomization of the social structure, the differentiation of the economic structure, and the diversification of the value system in current rural society are the social basis of grassroots governance. It is difficult for the grassroots organizations to accomplish their governance goal by relying solely on the informal system of Confucian society or public rules of modern society; what is needed is to effectively combine and balance the two. Unlike the rightobligation view with legally based rationales developed in Western civil society, Chinese farmers’ bondbased view of rights and obligations is the value basis for the grassroots organizations to put their governing power into operation. It is this combined support of both social and value foundations in rural China that has made it possible for this “tied checkandbalance" to have become the core mechanism for grassroots organizations to routinely operate their governing power.

Key words: grassroots organization,  , rural society,  , tied checkandbalance, v , iews of rights and obligations