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Understanding Democratization Variances in Rural China Village Elections

This study by Ting Luo explores why village elections vary across rural China, examining the impact of collective resources, revenue sources, and villager ties. By analyzing the implementation of official guidelines versus actual practices, the research uncovers factors influencing election competitiveness.

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Understanding Democratization Variances in Rural China Village Elections

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  1. What accounts for the variance of democratization? --- A study on village elections in rural China By Ting Luo PhD in Government London School of Economics and Political Science

  2. Research Question • Why there is variance across villages on the implementation of village elections? • Official guidelines of the procedures of village elections are used as a standard. • A county in Guangdong is selected as research site.

  3. Literature review • Existing explanation: GDP, Collective revenue • Limitations: • Institutional arrangement of villages in allocating the collective resources • Composition of collective revenue

  4. Official guidelines VS. Actual implementation

  5. Dilemma in the actual implementation of official guidelines • Theoretically, to convene village wide meeting is to guarantee the principle of one-man-one-vote and the democratic value of the elections • Practically, it is not realistic.

  6. Explaining the variance • Collective resources

  7. Composition of collective revenue • One-off payment from selling lands VS. long term management of collective resources such as letting the lands • If a village generates collective revenue from selling lands, the following election tends to be competitive and irregular. • Eg: Deng village and Yang village

  8. Percentage of villagers working outside of villages

  9. Conclusion • The more the tie of villagers to the village, the more competitive the elections. competitiveness is the intervening variables, relating the above mentioned three factors and the implementation of village elections. • To offset the negative influence of generating one-off payments from selling lands, villages may need some institutional arrangements to supervise the transaction and the use of the one-off payments, which is beyond the scope of this paper and need further research.

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