IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/polsoc/v35y2007i1p145-179.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Failure of Organizational Control: Changing Party Power in the Chinese Countryside

Author

Listed:
  • An Chen

    (National University of Singapore, polchena@nus.edu.sg)

Abstract

As frequent, violent, and organized peasant protests show, China’s reform regime has lost its once all-powerful control in the countryside. The sharp decline of village cadres’ positional authority in allocating economic resources, which began in post-Mao decollectivization, holds the key to explaining the change. Since the late 1990s, the collapse of village enterprises and the erosion of power over land have cost village cadres their remaining economic levers to engage the villagers as well as their incentives to work for the party-state. The loss of the regime’s grip on village cadres and the loss of command by village cadres on peasants have almost synchronized, causing the traditional structure of organizational control to crumble in vast rural areas. In the new, prevailing patterns of village governance, party power is becoming increasingly irrelevant.

Suggested Citation

  • An Chen, 2007. "The Failure of Organizational Control: Changing Party Power in the Chinese Countryside," Politics & Society, , vol. 35(1), pages 145-179, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:polsoc:v:35:y:2007:i:1:p:145-179
    DOI: 10.1177/0032329206297146
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0032329206297146
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0032329206297146?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Yaohui Zhao, 1999. "Leaving the Countryside: Rural-to-Urban Migration Decisions in China," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(2), pages 281-286, May.
    2. Meng,Xin, 2009. "Labour Market Reform in China," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521121118, September.
    3. Rozelle, Scott & Li, Guo, 1998. "Village Leaders and Land-Rights Formation in China," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(2), pages 433-438, May.
    4. Rozelle Scott & Boisvert Richard N., 1994. "Quantifying Chinese Village Leaders' Multiple Objectives," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 25-45, February.
    5. Lisa A. Keister & Victor G. Nee, 2001. "The Rational Peasant In China," Rationality and Society, , vol. 13(1), pages 33-69, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mullan, Katrina & Grosjean, Pauline & Kontoleon, Andreas, 2011. "Land Tenure Arrangements and Rural-Urban Migration in China," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 123-133, January.
    2. Su, Yaqin & Tesfazion, Petros & Zhao, Zhong, 2018. "Where are the migrants from? Inter- vs. intra-provincial rural-urban migration in China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 142-155.
    3. Terry Sicular & Yaohui Zhao, 2002. "Earnings and Labor Mobility in Rural China: Implications for China's WTO Entry," University of Western Ontario, Economic Policy Research Institute Working Papers 20028, University of Western Ontario, Economic Policy Research Institute.
    4. de la Rupelle, Maëlys & Quheng, Deng & Li, Shi & Vendryes, Thomas, 2009. "Land Rights Insecurity and Temporary Migration in Rural China," IZA Discussion Papers 4668, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Yang Yao & Monica Martinez Bravo & Gerard Padro i Miquel & Nancy Qia, 2012. "The Effects of Democratization on Public Goods and Redistribution: Evidence from China," Working Papers id:5011, eSocialSciences.
    6. Hongqin Chang & Ping Ai & Yuan Li, 2018. "Land tenure policy and off-farm employment in rural China," IZA Journal of Migration and Development, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 8(1), pages 1-28, December.
    7. Meng, Xin & Zhang, Dandan, 2010. "Labour Market Impact of Large Scale Internal Migration on Chinese Urban 'Native' Workers," IZA Discussion Papers 5288, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    8. Hongqin Chang & Jing Liu & Yanyun Gao, 2017. "Land tenure policy and women’s off-farm employment in rural China," Working Papers PMMA 2017-03, PEP-PMMA.
    9. Monica Martinez-Bravo & Gerard Padró i Miquel & Nancy Qian & Yang Yao, 2012. "Elections in China," NBER Working Papers 18101, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Jianglin Lu & Keqiang Wang & Hongmei Liu, 2022. "Residents’ Selection Behavior of Compensation Schemes for Construction Land Reduction: Empirical Evidence from Questionnaires in Shanghai, China," Land, MDPI, vol. 12(1), pages 1-29, December.
    11. Grimm, Michael & Klasen, Stephan, 2007. "Geography vs. Institutions at the Village Level," Proceedings of the German Development Economics Conference, Göttingen 2007 9, Verein für Socialpolitik, Research Committee Development Economics.
    12. Qin, Pin & Carlsson, Fredrik & Xu, Jintao, 2009. "Forestland Reform in China: What do the Farmers Want? A Choice Experiment on Farmers’ Property Rights Preferences," Working Papers in Economics 370, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    13. Ping Qin & Fredrik Carlsson & Jintao Xu, 2011. "Forest Tenure Reform in China: A Choice Experiment on Farmers’ Property Rights Preferences," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 87(3), pages 473-487.
    14. Joachim Ahrens & Patrick Jünemann, 2011. "Adaptive Efficiency and Pragmatic Flexibility: Characteristics of Institutional Change in Capitalism, Chinese-style," Chapters, in: Werner Pascha & Cornelia Storz & Markus Taube (ed.), Institutional Variety in East Asia, chapter 2, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    15. Chen, Yuanyuan & Wang, Haining & Cheng, Zhiming & Smyth, Russell, 2023. "Education and Migrant Health in China," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 121(C).
    16. Wang, Bo & Li, Fan & Feng, Shuyi & Shen, Tong, 2020. "Transfer of development rights, farmland preservation, and economic growth: a case study of Chongqing’s land quotas trading program," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    17. Xuejun Liu & Albert Park & Yaohui Zhao, 2010. "Explaining Rising Returns to Education in Urban China in the 1990s," Trade Working Papers 22720, East Asian Bureau of Economic Research.
    18. Sylvie Démurger & Haiyuan Wan, 2012. "Payments for ecological restoration and internal migration in China: the sloping land conversion program in Ningxia," IZA Journal of Migration and Development, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 1(1), pages 1-22, December.
    19. Xin Meng & Sen Xue, 2020. "Social networks and mental health outcomes: Chinese rural–urban migrant experience," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 33(1), pages 155-195, January.
    20. Wang, Chunchao & Zhang, Chenglei & Ni, Jinlan & Zhang, Haifeng & Zhang, Junsen, 2019. "Family migration in China: Do migrant children affect parental settlement intention?," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(2), pages 416-428.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:polsoc:v:35:y:2007:i:1:p:145-179. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.