System Density On The Development Of Villagers' Autonomy

Institutions are rules which restrict and normalize people's mutualrelationship. They can be divided into two types, namely, internal institutionsand external institutions. Internal institutions are rules naturally formed andevolved through long-term accumulation of human experience, while externalinstitutions are rules made by political authority from top to bottom andimplemented in society. The political development is based on the balancebetween supply and demand of institutions, especially the coordination andbeing functionally complementary between the internal and externalinstitutions.Reflected from the aspects of institutionalism, the core evolution course ofvillagers' self-governance is the sprouting, growth, and development ofvillagers' self-governance institutions. This course involves villagers'long-tern life experience in the rural community, the internal institutions inline with the 'self-management, self-education and self-service' spirit ofvillagers' self-governance and many external institutions made andembedded into the rural community through certain formal means by thecountry, the party and social organizations.The Promulgation of Organic Law of Villagers' Committees (Trial) was issuedand put into force since 1987. During the past twenty years, with thedevelopment of villagers' self-governance led by the country, governmentdepartments of different levels have made large amounts of documental lawsand policies, which gradually forms a huge institutional system including notonly the constitution, laws, administrative regulations and policies of thecountry, but also the construction and innovation of the institution based onthe reality by each province, municipal, county and township as well as thevillage organizations' acceptance and innovation of the institution. However, these external institutions do overpass the actual needs of villagers'self-governance and upset the balance of supply and demand of institutions, which has narrowed down the space for internal institutions and led to theinverse proportion between the efficiency of villagers' self-governance and the supply of institutions. Finally, an institutional involution situation, uselessfor the development of villagers' self-governance, will come into being.The courses of institutional involution in villagers' self-governance aremultiple. The Ideological foundation lies in the ignorance of the balancebetween the cost and the supply and demand of institutions and highexpectation on performance. The inducible factor is the local originator whichmeans that the central government lacks unified and specific provisions andmainly depends on the institutional exploration and innovation of localgovernments. Intensification of the mechanism is the result from gropingattempts to institutions and low performance caused by the ragged quality ofgrassroots cadres and the masses. The administrative source comes fromdifferent government departments' departure from the principle of publicspirit and absorbing, precipitation and interception the public-sector interestsin sake of one's own department. Scholars' experiment on villagers'self-governance has become the boost force of institutional involution.The basic point of villagers' self-governance is the practice of DemocraticElection, Democratic Decision-making, Democratic Governance and DemocraticSupervision. That is to say, only the villagers have the right to deal with thevillage affairs. The governments and other organizations have no right tointerfere. However, the institutional involution of villagers' self-governancehas led to the overloading of system in the practice of villagers'self-governance, brought about conflicts between internal and externalinstitutions, resulted in the village and villagers' weak political adaptabilityand thus weaken rural grassroots democracy and autonomous function andthreaten the government authority as well as complicating the conflictsbetween the country and society. Therefore, in order to guarantee the soundand continuous development of villagers" self-governance, we should buildup the concept of limited government, pay attention to unlimited expansionof administrative functions, provide enough space for the performance ofvillagers' main role, increase the practical usage and value of institutionalsupplies and prevent villagers' self-governance from sliding into more serioustraps of institutional involution.