Abstract:

Regarding launching an urban renewal project,the rising social pressure makes the grassroots state harden the rules while the remaining high pressure from the top makes them keep rules elastic,the contradiction between which causes the dilemma in urban development nowadays. Taking a landmark pilot project as an example,via the observation of the practice of rule hardening principle described as “One Ruler Measures to the End”,this article tries to answer the question of how it is possible for power to reproduce its operational space under nowadays-rising regulatory constraint. In this case,the principle of “Rule Hardening” includes both “result” and “process”,and fulfills through three-step mechanism as hardening in external conditions,hardening in compromising rules and hardening in the limitation of bringing to press. Though this mechanism,the grassroots state manages to mobilize the resources embedded in the system and extend the hidden boundary of the hard and rigorously rules on the surface that makes the rules elastic and soft again,but in a more formal,institutional and organizational way. It could be considered as the state correspondence to the rising social protest during last phrase and indicates a more exquisite and unobvious way of governance,which shows the continuously interaction between the state and the society in the long view of history.

Key words: urban renewal, grassroots governance, operational process of power, rule hardening