Village Elections

This book chronicles the evolution and progress of village elections in China, and offers a roadmap as to what could eventually be the beginning of a more extensive liberalization and democratization process. Initiatives to allow greater autonomy to common people led to eventually allowing village elections, which allowed all villages to elect their mayor, or village chief and local council every three years.

Cet ouvrage couvre la période qui va de 1758 à nos jours.

This book examines village democracy and the prospects of China's democratization. It explains how three key factors - township, economy and kinship - shape village democracy and account for rural variations. It considers the extension of village to township elections, the idea of a mixed regime and its impact on political development in China.

Unlike the election models in other Asian countries, rural elections in China were created from the grassroots level by farmers before they were officially and legally recognized by the government.As China is going through rapid urbanization and an increasing number of the rural population is moving to cities, village elections and power structures in the villages are also experiencing changes. By drawing on over 2,000 rural elections cases in China, this book analyzes the latest developments and deciphers their implications — not only for village elections, but also for China's democratization process. It also examines the interplay between state power and village elections: whether one grows at the expense of the other. Readers interested in China's rural elections will find this book a useful read.

Twenty years after the launch of village elections, the time is ripe to assess the progress and impact of China’s most notable political reform. Where have elections been conducted well and where have they been conducted poorly? How have procedures changed over the years and have elections truly transformed how power is exercised in the countryside? What methods are researchers employing to study elections and how have scholars from different disciplines contributed to our knowledge of grassroots politics in China? This book carefully examines the implementation and effects of China’s village, township, and people’s congress elections, both in terms of democratizing the polity and spurring other changes in state-society relations. The chapters in this book have been published across several issues of the Journal of Contemporary China.

Abstract: While the literature on consumption insurance is growing fast, little research has been conducted on how rural consumption insurance is affected by democracy. In this paper the authors examine how consumption insurance of Chinese rural residents is affected if the local leader is democratically elected. Exploring a unique panel data set of 1,400 households from 1987 to 2002, they find that consumption insurance is more complete when the households are in villages with elected village leaders. Furthermore, democracy improves consumption insurance only for the poor and middle-income farmers, but not for the rich. These findings underline the importance of democratic governance for ensuring better rural consumption insurance and poverty reduction.