Abstract: One important area in Sociology is civil disputes. With frequent social conflicts and a large number of civil disputes in current China, it is theoretically and practically meaningful to identify their mechanisms. Based on the existing research on civil disputes, this paper takes “power” as a core concept and proposes a theoretical framework of “power’s mandatory and transitive mechanisms” from the perspectives of status structure and network structure to analyze the impact of the power from the individual’s ego and the power from his/her social network on the involvement and responses in civil disputes. An analysis of the relevant variables in the Chinese General Social Survey 2006 (CGSS2006) showed the following results: Firstly, both individual’s ego power and social network power helped avoiding social disputes; and secondly, with either the ego power or the social network power, those with more power resources were the ones who were more likely to use formal channels to deal with disputes. This study has demonstrated that using power as a core concept in a theoretical perspective to decipher the involvement and responses in civil disputes is feasible. For urban residents, the process of engaging in the disputes and dealing with them is a process of power functioning in its full force.

Key words: power , civil disputes , social class , social network