经济发展与竞争性的村委会选举

有关经济发展与民主化之间的关系,长期以来一直是学术界争论的一个热点问题。不过,由于大多数研究者将注意力都集中在解释国家层面的民主化问题,因而对一个国家内部在民主化改革中呈现出的差异性问题则鲜有论述。本文通过详细的数据分析表明,在实施村级选举的过程中,经济发展水平较高的地方,由于村委会有较高的集体收入,村民参与的程度较高,选举竞争也较为激烈。因此,在经济发达的地方,村委会选举的制度也得到了较好的实施。一、理论分析和假设李普塞特(Seymour Lipset)很早就对经济发展与民主化的关系这个问题作过研究,他认为经济发展能促…

Economic Development and Competitive Village Elections

The 2001 survey in the rural area of Fujian Provice of China revealed that economic development, village collective revenues in particular, played a positive role in the elections of village councilors. With the economic development came an increase in collective revenues as well as differentiation in villagers' interests. Village election thus became an important institutional channel for villagers to articulate their interests. The survey results indicated that it was the collective revenues and the villagers' relative living standards that had stimulated the election participation from the villagers as voters or candidates, which had promoted the effecting of the election system. The following variables were all found to be positively correlated: degree of economic development, amount of the village revenues under collective control, election-benefit connection, election participation by villagers, village election competitiveness, and actuation of the village council election system.