The Functional Paradox Of The Petition System:the Peasants’ Right-safeguarding And Social Stability

Nowadays,peasants’ fighting for rights is a social phenomenon in China,which has caused widespread social concerns. Especially peasants’visits to higher authorities for help, often become the focus of policy construction and social debating point. Closely related to this phenomenon is the petition system, which is a political system with Chinese characteristics. It aims to attract the public opinions, to coordinate the contradictions, and maintaining social stability. It always performs with strong administrative tint. Just like many other systems, the petition system has had some defects since the designing stage. It has occupied the space of judicial relief system. The system shoulders great responsibility but lacks in actual ability of operating and coordinating. With the process of system transitioning, the petition system has experienced heterization in recent years. The petition system has played important roles in each period of our history. However, in the present period of social transformation, the defects of the letters and visits system itself and changes of peasants’fighting form result in the complex situation of letters and visits. In my opinion, it is the functional paradox of the petition system itself that acts most behind this.This thesis aims to reveal the functional paradox of the petition system, namely to take account of safeguarding peasants’rights and maintaining social stability together. Meanwhile, through the empirical case analysis, this thesis dissected the effects from this paradox both to the fighting form of Chinese famers and the overall situation of letters and visits. These effects include:surging costs for stability from constant visits to higher authorities, passiveness to the government caused by media in letters and visits, and it is hard to settle petition cases because of the omission of terminating mechanism for the system of letters and visits. In addition, this thesis proposed the complementary suggestion to distinguish the types of rights-protecting visits and interests-seeking visits.