Rural autonomy is playing an important part in the rural grass-root democratic construction. Rural bribery is becoming one of the main barriers in new Socialist Countryside Construction, which gets the grass-root democratic autonomy in puzzledom. The paper is based on the experience of two different villages—G village in Inner Mongolia and Y village in Shanxi province, inducing and organizing the explanatory reasons and solving projects of rural bribery by researchers in recent years in doctrinal angle, discussed separately from the perspectives of institution study, economics and social capital theory. It tries to compare the advantages and disadvantages of various ways to establish a comprehensive governance framework for rural bribery.
After 30 years reforming, under the background of social transformation, the government reinforces the importance of the “three rural issues”; our country rural area has made significant progress in the political democratization, economic marketization, etc. In the early 80s, rural autonomy became important results of implementation of grass- root democratic in our country, and democratic election is the important embodiment of basic level autonomy. In recent years, the phenomenon of unfair and shortcomings in rural elections have been explored by the network media in our country; rural bribery has been front in the rural elections and governance, and become the main culprit of destruction of democracy at the grass-root democratic. Rural bribery repeated emergence and became a bone sticking in the rural governance with the advancement of urbanization process in China in recent years. Therefore, how to curb rural bribery in the general election in the countryside, and ensure that voters have the right to vote and be elected fairly and openly, and guarantee the construction of socialism new countryside to preserve the rural collective interests, have become the important exploration direction of scholars.
This article selects domestic scholars in recent years about some cause analysis and countermeasures, analyzes the advantages and flaws of all kinds of views during the process of rural election in our country, and rationally explores the application of various ways, in order to help more for fully studying rural governance.
In our country, facing bribery behavior in the public organization, ordinary citizens generally adopt the way of report or petition to terminate violation behavior, if the way is blocked, citizens would be expected to replace the current beneficiary of bribery by voting rights in the next general election including rural. When the impeach petitions cannot effectively safeguard the collective rights, many village residents put all their hopes in the next general election. We call this approach “opportunistic” victory. Made it difficult for many of the villagers to accept the term of bribery phenomenon win in such a split of “opportunistic” victory. The failures to prohibit bribery phenomenon has seriously restricted the reasonable interest expression and legitimate political demands of farmers during the construction of “three agriculture”. Bribery behavior has become a significant cause that damaged Socialist Democratic Politics with Chinese Characteristics. Rural grassroots election is caught in a dilemma of bribery, on the one hand, reflects the interests of all parties in the process of state transition; On the other hand, reflects Informal disadvantages during the process of the grass-root democratic construction in our country countryside democracy [
1) The interpretation of the system of socialism: the lack of perfect definition by law
In 2005 Ministry of Civil Affairs in Economic Daily defines vote buying as a behavior that candidates and their friends and relatives directly or instigating others to bribe village voters, election staff or other candidates with money, property or other benefits [
During the research, Baotou city a G village villager said privately, as long as the family of five give their votes to a candidate, their illegal grazing would be neglected in the future.
According to the “system construction” of the new system, system is a set of constraints that constraint people’s daily life behavior. A certain system builds a certain behavior. Oliver∙Williamson thought “system of details” [
2) The explanation of economics: direct inducements
Some researchers said the more impoverished place, the more prone to vote buying [
Since the problem of vote buying restricts the development of democratic autonomy, it must be solved. Some people believe that rural relative to the city lacks strong economic support, so the farmers’ rights protection awareness and participation are greatly lags behind the urban people, which is the direct cause of the vote buying existing a large amount for a long time. So quite a few scholars put forward to develop the rural
economy, improve the rural infrastructure construction, improve the rural pension and medical security system, encourage the development of township enterprises, thus promote rural urbanization, in order to improve the rural population income as the breakthrough point, so as to improve farmers’ awareness and the concept of democratic participation. As a third party power of government has to play a decisive role in the process of promoting rural economic development, give full play to local advantages, help economically backward regions to realize sustainable development, take the path of scientific development.
3) The interpretation of the “citizens”: the lack of powerful supervision
When the phenomenon of unfairness and injustice appeared in rural campaign, the first people who knows is the member of the village committee of perception. Due to the lack of legal knowledge and traditional inertial thinking, farmers solve the problem mainly through the form of letters or direct petition to inform on people of bribery. First of all, concerning “bureaucrats shield one another”, farmers have generally low trust in the villages and towns government [
Rural bribery restricts the pace of rural democratic governance, according to the above some reasons about the rural bribery troubled, Chinese scholars has carried on the empirical research about the specific problems of the rural election, and made some countermeasures. They claims from the aspects of normative legal system as a breakthrough point, or from the aspects of developing rural economy, increasing farmers’ income, or improve the law or the consciousness of the citizen as the starting point to improve the rural social citizens. In order to seeking rural governance mode and realize the democracy at the grassroots level, safeguard social cohesion, build a new socialist countryside, it is significance to clear up and explore the paths of rural bribery, and analyze and evaluate the advantages and disadvantages between them.
1) Seeking the path of institutional eradication: Ignore the objective necessity
Because the law has loophole, some people put forward to perfect the legal system, improving the villagers autonomy from the perspective of system science. For a long time, some scholars advocate to build the electoral law, system, and hope perfecting the village committee election process through strengthening legislation. They claims defining the concept of vote-buying in the form of legislative interpretation, establishing the public and institutional examine of selection of public funds in the electoral law [
First of all, the village committee acts as an autonomous mass organizations at the grass-roots level in rural areas, its decisions tend to be produced by negotiation or the members of the vote, the village committees’ decision must be responsible for the villagers’ meeting. The function of village meeting can point to a kind of “procedural justice”, which holds that a legitimate election process effects the villagers attitude and behavior after fishing the completion of the election. Accordingly, he also believes the result is fair and justice under this program. On the contrary, if it is “go through the motions” that lack due process to guarantee, it will lead to a series of disputes.
Second, if from the perspective of public choice theory, vote-buying has a certain inevitability, it appears with democratic politics [
2) Traditional economic relief mode: The path dependence of history
Backward economy leads to the imbalance of superstructure, it can be corrected by promoting economic development. One important reason is that many rural areas in our country can’t make a breakthrough through their own efforts after long-term poverty and backwardness, majority realize development depending on the state power of third party. The advantage of it is the backward villages can be gained all kinds of resources that developing the economy needs in a short period of time, and more significantly effect can be achieved. But the disadvantage are that rural falls into the traditional pattern of relief, and distorts grassroots autonomy.
In our country, village-level cadre is elected by the villagers, and it is one of the main performance of the villagers’ autonomy. The promulgated of Organic Law of Village Committees marked the dissolution of township and village administrative subordination relations, realised an autonomous in political and legal sense, the village level organization has no responsibility and obligation to the township administrative organization, only on the working relationship, the village level organization has to support and help accomplish organization issued of township-government [
Nevertheless, now in the context of the country, the old implicit obedience―the relationship of command in the village committee and the administrative department is still exist. On the one hand, the local level administrative units intervenes “Fall within the scope of the villager autonomy in accordance with the law” by bright or dark ways, especially in some villages under the condition of economy is heavily dependent on local government, part of the township and village leaders designate or appoint the next village leaders (village head, party branch secretary) to muscle into the rural democratic decision-making, manage and supervise and restrict the election litigation channel, it is a disguised form to act the village committee as rural grass-roots units that has the nature of the state power, or act the village committee as sending agencies of the town government [
Path dependence. With the spread of North’s theory of institutional change, path dependence become another important view to look at the current problems in domestic academic circles. In simple terms, North thought there is a specific path in institutional changes, the deep history has a very important role on change of system [
3) Seeking solutions of social capital: A paradigm
The social capital theory is a very fashionable way in recent years within several mainstream interpretation of rural bribery this paper,. It thought the explanation that it is our country rural lacks social capital stock that leads to the plight of rural governance is a compelling. In the countryside, the backward education and weak tradition of democratic culture leaded to the participation of farmers’ autonomy consciousness, historical deposition smallholder thought hindered the formation of social networks, all these leaded to vote buying in rural areas existing for a long time, and become the factors that restrict the course of democratic autonomy.
Contemporary scholars, Robert D. Putnam and Larry Diamond represented by a group of scholars, vigorously promoting the social capital plays an important part in social development, especially in promoting the development and prosperity of a country or region economic and democratic aspects play a huge role. Robert D. Putnam professor thought reciprocity, trust and participation network constitute an important dimension of social capital, it is also an important index to measure the social capital stock. Diamond thought civil association educated the public, it promoted the society develop to the goal of more freedom and autonomy, and made citizens respect state and actively participate in state affairs. Two of them proved their judgment by tight experience arguments and reasoning. In a word, rich social capital can promote social justice and democracy movement, and full of public spirit of citizens will fight with a series of hindrance phenomenon of freedom, so, it also can effectively prevent the happening of the rural bribery [
Rural autonomy in China has carried out for decades, and the systems of democracy have taken root in China’s rural village. The phenomenon of rural bribery leads to the stagnation or even retrogradation in part of the rich rural autonomy; some relatively poor countries are poorer and weaker, and become one of the main obstacles of people as the masters of their own country in the new period. From the end of last century, there were many articles about rural bribery. By integrating the cause of rural bribery and for reasons of the proposed countermeasures of various scholars, this paper tried to make an induction through a comprehensive perspective, and then analyzed the feasibility of different solutions and defects, in order to do a little research about rural grassroots democracy autonomy in the new period of our country.
Through the above analysis, we learn that the occurrence of rural bribery is a kind of objective necessity; there are plights of theory and practice on governance; namely, it is impossible to eradicate in the political market and democracy development stage. Hence, some people are in gloomy mood, even advocate canceling grassroots autonomy system. Elinor Ostrom said in The Management of Public Affairs, “Any policy based on the metaphor may be harmful”. The established theoretical framework and preconceived assumptions may prevent us from advancing in reality. Through theoretical and empirical research, even though we cannot fundamentally eliminate the obstruction that rural bribery causes in the democratization process, we can reduce the interference through comprehensive governance approaches in many aspects, thereby controlling the hazard in the smallest scope. First of all, since the reasonable system standard can produce beneficial behavior, then we can realize the standardization and legalization of rural election by continuously perfecting the legal system, and establish perfect and reasonable rules and regulations. Secondly, from the political and economic relations theory aspects, since rural unreasonable economic structure and poor economic conditions have become the cause that rural bribery occurs, then we can narrow the gap between urban and rural areas, vigorously develop the rural economy, promote the implementation of the support agriculture and the benefiting-farmers policy, gradually reduce the potential recipient of rural bribery, and pay attention to realize the positive interaction between the party and government organs, administrative management and the villagers’ autonomy in the process of rural urbanization. Finally, based on the role of social capital for the western democratic society, on the one hand, we should speed up the construction of harmonious rural, raise farmers’ cultural quality, and enrich rural community activities; on the other hand, we also need to maintain the stability of rural life, and prevent the deformity development of rural association.
Qin, S.F. (2016) Chinese Rural Bribery: The Plight of Rural Grass-Root Democratic Autonomy. Journal of Human Resource and Sustainability Studies, 4, 337-345. http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/jhrss.2016.44032