Organizer: Michelle S. Mood, Providence College
Chair: David Zweig, Tufts University
Discussant: Edward Friedman, University of Wisconsin
This panel tackles the dynamics and implications of Chinese grassroots institutional formation and transformation. Recent Chinese political reforms have increased village autonomy, instituted cadre responsibility systems, and even allowed villagers to sue cadres. Such measures create new institutions and give old ones new roles. Villagers (farmers, entrepreneurs, workers, cadres) respond differently to these changes, making it fruitful to examine which ones avail themselves of new institutions, and how.
Rather than taking institutions only as independent variables that shape grassroots political power, strategies, and policy, the participants also explore them as outcomes themselves dependent on a wide variety of other factors. Specifically, where, why, and how have institutions been changed or established? Could it be that alternative local state institutions fill roles elsewhere played by social institutions?
Panelists focus on the interactive effect between (a) peasant politics and the rural political economy and (b) newly created organizations (e.g., village committees, corporations, economic commissions) and institutions (e.g., laws on elections, contracts, use and transfer rights). Daniel Kelliher studies politics in village committee institutionalization to understand the feedback relationship between bottom-up and top-down efforts to establish grassroots self-government. Tianjian Shi explores institutional consequences of rural electoral reforms. Michelle Mood investigates how rural entrepreneurial endeavors and development trajectories shape roles of factory-related institutions and organizations. Kevin O'Brien and Lianjiang Li examine how popular resistance to cadres can fashion institutions which increase village cadre accountability and restrict penetration by township authorities.
Not only does the panel reverse the usual orientation of new institutionalism, it also seeks to unpack "the state" into its component organizations and agents. By also focusing on both politics and political economy at the grassroots level, we hope to enliven debates on rural reform.
Elections in Rural China
Tianjian Shi, Duke University
The election system in China has undergone fundamental change since the 1970s. In 1979, a new election law for National People's Congress and people's congresses at all levels provided for direct election of people's congresses at the county level for the first time in the PRC's history. The law requires the number of candidates in each precinct to be one and one half to two times the number of deputies to be elected rather than, as in the past, the same number. Citizens and groups also now have the legal right to nominate candidates. According to the new law, all voting is to be by secret ballot, rather than by a show of hands. In the late 1980s, the Ministry of Civil Affairs furthered the reforms by introducing competitive elections for village committees and village heads. Although even these elections were still not a reliable or effective method for the common people to influence government policy, both instrumental and expressive benefits began to emerge from these elections. Based on a 1995 nationwide survey in rural China, this paper tries to answer the following questions in order to understand these emergent institutional changes. Who votes in these elections? What is the nature of voting behavior in China? What is the process of politicization for rural Chinese voters? Most crucially, are voters participating in voluntary political acts aimed at influencing the choices of local elites, or are they taking part in top-down mobilized political acts aimed at regime or system support in today's China?
Chinese Rural Enterprises: Changing Political Economies, Changing Institutions
Michelle S. Mood, Providence College
This paper examines the economic and social impact of fifteen years of rural enterprise growth in contemporary China, using four Tianjin villages to illuminate wider causes of institutional transformation. Relying on local publications and extensive interviews with factory administrators and village cadres, I trace growth patterns for each village, elucidating important factors influencing different roles and functions of the newly-established collective rural enterprise institutions, including village economic commissions and administrative corporations.
I address transformations in local institutions with regard to the distribution of decision-making authority. Important issues include opportunities for non-farm employment for men and women, wage and bonus scales for workers, opportunities for advancement of white collar and blue collar workers into factory and village leadership positions, and the use of enterprise profits.
Next I advance a hypothesis to explain diversity in institutions across the four villages. Structural variables which influence village development include land-to-labor ratio, infrastructure, land fertility, historical handicrafts, and pre-existing connections to the state sector and/or the pre-revolution private sector. Within these structures, individual actors also play a role in influencing development. Nevertheless, individuals cannot rework institutions at will; local norms constrain local actors. Therefore, my hypothesis is that the degree and direction of institutional change is created by the dynamic interaction between the impetus to transform, provided by local actors and by changes in the structure, and the resistance to reform, provided by local informal norms.
I conclude by examining the implications of institutional transformation in the wider context of rural China.
Policy-Based Resistance and Institutional Change in the Chinese Countryside
Kevin J. O'Brien, Ohio State University
Lianjiang Li, Nankai University and Ohio State University
This paper examines how "policy-based resistance" can prompt institutional changes in Chinese villages. Relying on archival materials as well as extensive interviews with villagers, village cadres, and township leaders in Fujian, Hebei, and Shandong, we discuss how villagers use central policies, laws and other official communications to defy grassroots cadres and induce them to accept institutional arrangements that increase cadre accountability and restrict township penetration. Our cases include: the creation of "peasant societies" (nonghui) which assumed power in Shandong villages before the passage of the Organic Law of Villagers' Committees; the transformation of villagers' representative assemblies from consultative to authority organs in Hebei; the introduction of election campaigning in Fujian villages; and experimentation with what is called the "double-ballot system" (liangpiaozhi) when electing village party committees in Shanxi.
Important questions we address include: how do Chinese villagers make use of new political resources (e.g., greater economic autonomy, freedom from class labeling, and improved legal protection) in their struggles with rural cadres? Why have recent political-legal reforms such as the cadre responsibility system, the villagers' committee law, and the campaign to promote rule by law emboldened well-informed peasants to challenge cadres who violate central policies while also making it virtually impossible for grassroots cadres to faithfully implement those same policies? More generally, what can new, policy-based forms of contention and their institutional ramifications tell us about possible growth of rights consciousness among Chinese peasants?