A Research About Elite And The Construction Of Participatory Community

Starting from the1990’s, China has constantly promoted the construction of community, and encouraged community participation. As the senior form of community participation, community autonomy has caused the attention of the government and scholars. A lot of community construction experience in emerge China endlessly, but due to the unit system is not fully offset and the market economy is not mature enough, domestic community participation still faces a series of problems, such as low overall participation rate, the uneven distribution of participants, lack of participating etc, so the quantity of participatory community in china is so rare. The author takes Cuizhuyuan community as a sample in this study, which is a typical participatory community in Nanjing. So the study of typical participatory community contribute to form distinctive community construction theory in china, and have some reference value to promote the experience of participatory community construction in a wider range in China.This article draws lessons from western theory of "elite", the "rational choice theory","social capital theory" and the research methods which domestic scholar always apply in their community participation study. Combing with the actual situation of China community and taking the typical participatory community Cuizhuyuan in Nanjing as an example, it analyzes the status of community participation in Cuizhuyuan, and tries to answer some questions about "how to structure a participatory community","what role do elites play in the building process of participatory community" and so on. The research based on qualitative research and supplemented by quantitative research. Through interviews, questionnaires and case study, from the micro-level, the author studies of the structure of participatory community and the function of elite. This paper obtains basic viewpoint through questionnaire survey which contains many items such as the breadth of community participation, the depth of community participation, extent of organization, frequency, durability, the effect of community participation and the participation desire. In addition to this, This paper makes deep-level qualitative analysis through case interviews of a few activists, leaders, members of community club, government officials, residents, and other elites.Due to the policy and government resources superiority, elites in system contribute to the community construction. And at the same time, non-system elites always use social capital and personal resources to promote the community construction. Complementary resources between elites is helpful to increase the force of community construction, and the mutual model between elites will last for a long time. In addition to the interaction and mutual assistance between elites, the construction of participatory community also needs the interaction between elites and activists such as volunteers, the interaction between activists and community residents. The process from elite participation to mass participation is also the construction of participatory community. This paper tries to analyze the elections of Cuizhuyuan owners committee in2013, and finds that four elements are very important to the construction of participatory community, such as diffusion strategy of variety of information, focus on institutional construction, the building of mutual interests in community, and organizational construction. Finally, this paper put forward some ideas which aim at improving the participatory community construction in China, promote community democracy and autonomy of grass-roots.