Why Village Election Has Not Much Improved Village Governance

Tan, Qingshan

doi:10.1007/s11366-010-9095-1

Cited by 13 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…A VC not only receives orders from the township government, but is also subject to checks and even directives of the village party organization, especially the VPS. In fact, studies show that the power struggle between the VC and the VPS paralyzes village self-government in some places (e.g., Tan 2010). Would the consideration of VPSs alter our main finding?…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Informal Institutions, Collective Action, and Public Investment in Rural China

Yao

2015

Am Polit Sci Rev

196

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Do informal institutions, rules, and norms created and enforced by social groups promote good local governance in environments of weak democratic or bureaucratic institutions? This question is difficult to answer because of challenges in defining and measuring informal institutions and identifying their causal effects. In the article, we investigate the effect of lineage groups, one of the most important vehicles of informal institutions in rural China, on local public goods expenditure. Using a panel dataset of 220 Chinese villages from 1986 to 2005, we find that village leaders from the two largest family clans in a village increased local public investment considerably. This association is stronger when the clans appeared to be more cohesive. We also find that clans helped local leaders overcome the collective action problem of financing public goods, but there is little evidence suggesting that they held local leaders accountable.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Informal Institutions, Collective Action, and Public Investment in Rural China

Yao

2015

Am Polit Sci Rev

196

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“…Funding for works comes primarily from the central government through fiscal transfers that serve to centralize power (He, 2007; Tan, 2010). A competitive process guides distribution of funds to villages.…”

Section: Chinese Rural Development Policy and Governancementioning

confidence: 99%

Governance of resettlement compensation and the cultural fix in rural China

Gomersall

2020

Environ Plan A

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Financial management of resettlement funding has always been problematic for governments and development agencies trying to mitigate the negative effects of moving people from one location to another. In China, Poverty Alleviation Resettlement attempts to rectify the shortcomings in policies designed for distributing compensation and ensuring funds reach their intended use with apparatuses of security. Governance technologies take the form of reimbursement subsidies, which mitigate the risk that funds will be corrupted or households misuse money, by reimbursing expenditures already made on village construction. These technologies convey the contradictory nature of Chinese rural development, as they employ neoliberal discourse to direct fiscal transfers from the central government to enterprising individuals, but also attempt poverty alleviation of rural societies’ most marginalized households. Resettlement technologies are therefore leading to uneven development while simultaneously claiming to adhere to transnational poverty alleviation norms. In this article, the Party-state applies a cultural fix to resolve contradictions in the development apparatus. The Party-state draws on historical governance norms to change the meaning of the corrupt official that receives disproportionate government assistance into the “ideal” all villages should emulate. In this way, the Chinese bureaucracy appropriates the power of local elites to guide conduct and achieve broader political economic goals.

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“…But, many local governments lacked the capacity and the motivation to achieve this ambitious goal (Chen, 2014; Kennedy, 2007; O’Brien & Li, 1999; Waldron et al., 2006). Rural areas had divided welfare policy sectors (Han & Gao, 2019; Huang & Kim, 2020; Li & Walker, 2016, 2017; Mok et al., 2017; Qian & Mok, 2016; Yang et al., 2020; Zang, 2017), low governance capacity, and lackluster democracy (Huang, 1999; Tan, 2010). In response to these deficits, China has built a “department counterpart support village” arrangement beyond the original bureaucratic system in order to hit TPA’s targets.…”

Section: Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do visiting monks give better sermons? “Street‐level bureaucrats from higher‐up” in targeted poverty alleviation in China

Cai

Shen

Tang

2022

Public Admin & Development

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In those countries lacking democratic institutions and with weak professional bureaucracy and low governance capacity at the rural grassroots level, do different types of street-level bureaucrats (SLBs) exist? If so, how do they work? To answer these questions, this article constructs an institution-practice framework to understand the different types of SLBs. Based on fieldwork in three Chinese counties concerning their implementation of the Targeted Poverty Alleviation Policy, we found that the street-level bureaucracy from higher-up is the key to addressing China's inadequate street-level governance capacity. The organizational structure, mechanisms, and strategies of SLBs from higher-up are differ from other types of SLBs. The institutional arrangements of the SLBs from higher-up are campaign-style and informal; their institutional mechanisms are mainly idea loading and carrying, and policy learning; their motivation is politicalized, that is, they are politically committed and incentivized; they are also coping, but they are entrepreneurs. The SLBs from higher-up expands our understanding of the street-level bureaucracy as it relates to institutional embeddedness, diversified types, and escaping the trap of street-level governance capacity limitations.

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Why Village Election Has Not Much Improved Village Governance

Cited by 13 publications

References 31 publications

Informal Institutions, Collective Action, and Public Investment in Rural China

Informal Institutions, Collective Action, and Public Investment in Rural China

Governance of resettlement compensation and the cultural fix in rural China

Do visiting monks give better sermons? “Street‐level bureaucrats from higher‐up” in targeted poverty alleviation in China

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