Willow Village

Tucked away in the corner of a mountainous area, more than fifteen kilometers away from the town center, Willow Village appeared remote and unimportant to those in the township government, where its name and affairs seldom surfaced in casual conversations or serious discussions. All of this suddenly changed in the early days of the election season in 2006 when, in the preliminary election, the then village committee – the party secretary, the village head, and the accountant – all faced serious challenges. Mr. Wang, the party secretary who also stood for election to the village committee, narrowly made it to the second round; his partner, the village head, failed to win enough votes to advance. This shocked the township government for several reasons. First, in recent years the collective authority in this village had been in relatively good standing. Several years earlier, an outside investment project infused the village with significant financial resources in exchange for use of village land. The exchange enabled the village to pay off a collective debt of RMB 120,000 and even to maintain a surplus of RMB 40,000 in the collective account – an enviable financial situation for most village governments in this region. Second, since there had been no signs of trouble before, such unexpected results suggested considerable, behind-the-scenes organizing efforts beyond the control of the village government. The township government panicked. The unexpected election of new faces on the village committee meant that the township officials would have to deal with strangers.

During our long ride to the village, Mr. Chen, the head of the township government work team, was worried and dispirited about the dreaded second round of formal elections. He informed his team members that Mr. Wang had called him the previous night and had told him that the young challenger in his village had been working hard in recent days, mobilizing his kinship network and handing out promises. To make matters worse, Mr. Wang had few kinship ties upon which to rely; his was an outside family that had moved into the village, albeit many years ago. Almost resigned to a certain defeat by Mr. Wang and the other incumbents, Mr. Chen bitterly complained about the villagers: “They don’t care about cadre performance. In the end, they only vote along kinship lines.”

When we arrived in the courtyard of the village government, the election committee, comprised mostly of the current village committee members, was already busy working – hanging up banners, posting prescribed election slogans, and setting up a voting booth. In his late fifties, Mr. Wang was quiet, soft-spoken, and unpresumptuous, unlike some of his peers with whom I had become familiar during my fieldwork. I had learned much about Mr. Wang on our ride to the village. He was a veteran village cadre, and he had worked as village (brigade) cadre since the collective era. According to Mr. Chen, Mr. Wang had done an excellent job in this position and he significantly improved the well-being of the villagers.

When the voting started, the air in the crowded village courtyard turned tense. In a corner away from the crowd, Mr. Wang stood alone, awkward and resigned. I walked over to him and he eagerly struck up a conversation, complaining in a low voice that he expected to fail in the election and that the villagers did not appreciate what he had done for the village because they were only loyal to their next of kin. His bitter remarks echoed what Mr. Chen had said earlier, or was it the other way around?

The voting lasted several hours. Slowly the crowd dispersed, voices quieted, and the courtyard emptied. At around two o’clock in the afternoon, the number of ballots cast well exceeded the legal requirement of at least 50 percent of the eligible voters, so the voting booths were closed and the ballot counting began. Members of the election committee, the township government work team, and several “concerned villagers” from the challenger’s side were present to count the ballots and to oversee the process. The names on each ballot were simultaneously broadcast through the loudspeakers to the entire village.

In the final result Mr. Wang received the most votes – 150 out of the total 251 valid ballots. His partner, the village accountant, received 149 votes, the second largest number of votes, and the challenger received 133 votes. The three candidates who won the most votes – the two incumbents and the one contender – were elected to the next village committee. As the outright winner of the election, Mr. Wang was selected to head the village committee – a pleasant surprise to him, to those on the township government work team, and especially to Mr. Chen, the head of the work team. “After all, the eyes of the masses are discerning,” noted Mr. Chen, quoting a well-known expression related to Chinese politics, with a relieved smile.

Boulevard Village

Boulevard Village is one of four adjacent villages that constitute the center of the township. For many years, Boulevard Village was a headache for the township government. In 2003, the township government had dismissed the former village party secretary from his position for abuse of power. However, with the backing of a strong kinship base, he refused to hand over the seal that signified his authority. Worried about his influence, the township government dared not hold a meeting of village party members to elect a new party secretary. As a result, the party branch was paralyzed and the township government had to rely on cooperation from Mr. Liu, the elected head of the village committee. Tensions between those who supported the former party secretary and those who backed the village head persisted for many years and from time to time erupted into open confrontations.

Village elections offered the chance for an open, legitimate contest, and both sides actively mobilized their votes. On the eve of the election, Mr. Liu appeared to be the front-runner. Resentful of this expected outcome, the other side – the supporters of the old party secretary – made a desperate last-ditch effort to disrupt the preliminary election: Several villagers stormed into the voting site, tore apart the ballot boxes, and threw away the ballots that had already been collected in the boxes, thus temporarily halting the voting process. But the election committee, backed by the township government, quickly printed new ballots and restarted the voting process. The first round of the election concluded with no further incidents, and all members of the incumbent village committee were voted in to stand for the second, final election.

The formal election proceeded uneventfully. Perhaps in response to the disruptions during the first-round election, a larger-than-usual crowd amassed at the voting site. As more and more villagers entered the village courtyard, the single-file line of those waiting in front of the voting booth grew longer, twisting and wrapping around the courtyard, as villagers chatted and laughed. By the end of the election process, Mr. Liu had received 91 percent of the votes, a number he often proudly cited on subsequent occasions.

The high turnout and overwhelming outcome solidified Mr. Liu’s position and forced his opponents to retreat. Several weeks after the village election, the party branch election was formally held, and a new party secretary was elected. Everything soon calmed down and there were no more confrontations. In Boulevard Village, it appears that the village election has finally brought closure to a contentious past, ending a chapter – indeed an era – of open conflicts.

Bao Village

To the township government, Bao Village has been a long-running nightmare. Mr. Ren, the current village head, was elected to office three years earlier after he had mobilized his fellow villagers to overthrow the previous party secretary and his team. Incessant, intensive fighting engulfed kinship groups within the village and strained the village’s relationship with the township government. Mr. Ren was despised because, as some government officials alleged, he repeatedly bypassed the township government and petitioned the higher authorities (shangfang) directly. In a much talked about episode, a county government bureau promised to provide RMB 40,000 to develop a project in the village, but it never followed through. When Mr. Ren found out that the bureau had falsely reported this promise to the media as an accomplishment, he immediately filed a complaint with the county government and insisted that the bureau fulfill its promise. Grudgingly, the bureau finally complied under pressure. Mr. Ren was noncooperative in other ways as well. Three years earlier, during the previous election, he announced over loudspeakers that if elected, he would lead Bao Village to resist the collection of government taxes and fees. Many township government officials saw him as a thug.

Meanwhile, the township government was tactfully building its case to discredit him. Government aid to the village was withheld, funds from government programs were not allocated, and outside investment opportunities were diverted to other villages. Even when government funds that were specifically designated for Bao Village were transmitted, the township government was reluctant to make them available to Mr. Ren’s village committee. All of this was done under the pretense that village governance was so erratic that no one could be sure that the funds would be used appropriately. But the real motive behind these efforts was to cultivate grievances against the current village committee so that Mr. Ren and his team would be voted out of office in the election.

At the time of the election, I asked Mr. Jin, the township party secretary, if he anticipated that the village head of Bao village would be voted out. He confidently responded, “Of course,” and he added: “The villagers should know what is in their best interest. With such a village head, no outside opportunities will land in this village.” To facilitate the desired outcome of the election, the township government hastily appointed a new village party secretary and nominated him as a candidate to challenge Mr. Ren. Anticipating potential confrontations and disruptions, the township government cautiously postponed the election in Bao Village until after the other villages in the township had completed their elections.

The preliminary election in Bao Village was held on a cold morning, just before the last snowfall of the season. The village courtyard was crowded with villagers wrapped up in bulky winter clothes. The atmosphere was tense: An unusually large number of the township government work team members were deployed, clearly marked police cars were parked in the village courtyard, uniformed local police officers were present to deter altercations, and a videotaping crew had been hired to record the whole process. As the election proceedings commenced, confrontations broke out. First, loud, bitter voices were heard from the crowd; then, two or three men emerged at the front of the crowd, where Mr. Ren was presiding over the meeting. They pointed fingers at him and demanded that he explain to the entire village why he had not secured the kind of government aid that other villages had received. The shouts and near-physical gestures were so fierce that the township government officials had to step in from time to time to calm both sides. As the shouting was heard in waves, with one voice after another, Mr. Ren quietly advised his supporters: “Don’t pay attention to what is going on here, go and cast your votes.” An interesting scene ensued. At the center of the courtyard the shouting continued, but on the other side, the voting line snaked around the noisy crowd. Within a few hours, the township government received an unequivocal message: Mr. Ren received the most votes (189 out of 341) in the preliminary election. His successful reelection in the formal election followed several weeks later. Soon thereafter, his challenger – the township-appointed village party secretary – resigned from his position, packed his belongings, and left the village.

*    *    *

After the conclusion of the village elections, Mr. Jin, the party secretary of the township government, declared the election season had been a great success. There were good reasons for self-congratulations – all villages except one had carried out elections and the new village governments were up and running. A tough job had been completed. With only a few exceptions, most elected village cadres were the same familiar faces that the township government had either already worked with or was willing to work with. Moreover, through the election process, several difficult cases – such as the governance crisis in Boulevard Village – were resolved to the satisfaction of the township government. Finally, and most importantly, there were no major incidents to threaten “social stability” and no petitions beyond the township boundaries.

As an outside observer, I too saw the elections as a success story, but for different reasons. In most cases, the procedures were meticulously implemented. On most occasions, official instructions were followed closely: beginning with the formation of the village election committee and moving through the voter certification, the two rounds of voting, and the process of counting, registering, and sealing the ballots. One particular scene stuck in my memory. Election time was approaching on a chilly morning in Willow Village courtyard, but the villagers were still in their houses or scattered in small gatherings far away. Facing an almost empty courtyard, the current village head – who had failed in the preliminary election a few days earlier – bravely began to read the script that the government had prepared for this special occasion:

Dear voter comrades:

The announcement, lingering in the cold sky, was broadcast over loudspeakers. Drawn by these pleading calls, villagers gradually converged in the village center, filling the courtyard with greetings, chatting, and laughter. As I listened and watched, I felt the solemn power of the formal procedures that was sustaining the institution of Chinese village elections.

Although these formal procedures were often ceremonial, the progress made over time was real and substantial. At the voting site in one village, a township cadre pointed to a nearby corner and told me: “I was here during the village election a few years ago. At that time, the villagers sat there, and they were given the ballots. Then someone walked among them and said, ‘Let me fill out the ballot for you.’ And he collected many ballots from these villagers and did just that. No one cared.” But this time, right behind us, an empty room with doors on two sides was used for voting booths. Inside, three desks were set up far apart. Voters went through the checkpoint, where their voter certification cards were inspected, after which they headed into the room through one door, walked alone to one of the desks, filled out their ballots, and exited from the other door, casting their ballots on the way out.

How do we make sense of these different scenes of village elections? How have village elections evolved over time? In which direction? These are the issues I will address in the remainder of this chapter.

Specifying the Institutional Logics in Village Elections

To gain a port of entry into the village election processes, let us turn to the common scenes in village election events in rural China. At every election site – usually in the courtyard of the village center – we would observe crowds of villagers who had come to cast their votes. Their mobilization and behavior constitute the very election process under study. Looking closely, we also find members of the work team from the township government standing in strategic positions, guarding the ballot booths, helping illiterate voters fill out their ballots, and directing voting traffic. Moreover, invisible but felt everywhere is the presence of the state and state policies. Indeed, every step in the election process – from the announcement of the election proceedings, voter registration, voting procedures, to the slogans posted at the election site – closely follow the directives from the central government. Emerging from these noisy and at times chaotic scenes, then, are three distinct groups of actors – the villagers-as-voters, the officials from the township government, and the pervasive presence of the state and state policies. As argued before, the behavior of these groups is governed by the distinct logics of the institutions that have shaped the evolution of village elections; hence, they are the analytical focus here. I now discuss these underlying institutional logics, paying particular attention to the behavioral consequences that are entailed.

The State Logic

That the state plays a central role in the emergence of village elections as an institution is well recognized. Village elections were initiated and promoted through a top-down process in legislation and enforcement, in which the central government was the major driving force. In every election cycle, the central government issued directives that set up the major parameters for the village elections, which led to further elaboration of the rules and procedures in the implementation process through governments at the provincial, municipal, county, and township levels. Indeed, if we place our analytical focus narrowly on state policies in the area of village elections (i.e., the series of administrative fiats on the organization of village elections), one may even find a consistent and active voice advocating democratic practices.

Such an analytical focus, however, would be too narrow and misleading. It is here that we need to attend to the state logic – the institutional arrangements of the central government and the policymaking processes that dictate the behavior and policies of the central authorities in Beijing. The Chinese state, like its counterparts in other societal contexts, is by no means monolithic. Instead, it is fragmented with multiple agencies, multiple and inconsistent goals, and competing interests (Lampton Reference Lampton1987, Lieberthal and Lampton Reference Lieberthal and Lampton1992, Wilson Reference Wilson1989). This recognition points to several salient characteristics of the state logic. First, state policies toward village elections stem from a process of policymaking that involves competing interests among government agencies. Research shows that officials from the Ministry of Civil Affairs, the main agency in charge of village elections, are active in promoting village elections, whereas the Communist Party’s Organization Department is deeply concerned about the detrimental effects of the village elections on the authority of the party in rural China (He Reference He2007, Shi Reference Shi1999). As a result, there are inevitable institutional contradictions in state policies toward village elections. For example, the core principle of the village committee, “self-governance under the leadership of the Communist Party,” reveals a profound contradiction in terms. That is, village elections and self-governance must fit into the party-state framework (O’Brien and Li Reference O’Brien and Li2000).

Another important aspect of the state logic is that, beyond the immediate village election arena, there are other spheres of state governance that impose incongruent demands and goals upon those who are implementing, or who are recipients of, state policies at the local levels. For example, state efforts to extract resources in the rural areas require effective bureaucratic mobilization and intervention into the villages, which are at odds with the principle of village self-governance in the institution of village elections. Therefore, recognition of the state logic leads us to take a broader view to examine how multiple goals and interests of government agencies and state policies in other areas exert inconsistent, even conflicting, effects on village elections.

The behavioral consequences of the state logic in the evolution of village elections need to be understood in this light. First, state policies toward village elections evolve amidst multiple, inconsistent, and often competing, goals. To focus narrowly on only one particular policy advocate (e.g., the official rhetoric), in only the immediate policy area (e.g., the village election area), and at only one point in time, would overlook the fundamental characteristics of the state logic and their effects on the behavior of those involved in the village elections. For those who participate in the village elections, the various policies induced by the state logic, at an aggregate level, are characteristic of the inconsistencies and shifts between spurts of advocacy, indifference, or even containment. I summarize this line of argument as follows: The state logic dictates that state promotion of village elections is a function of multiple, conflicting goals and interests among agencies and groups. As a result, at the aggregate level, state policies toward village elections are inconsistent and shifting over time.

Second, state policies also evolve in response to tensions and crises emerging from the election process. An important implication of the state logic is the presence of temporal political coalitions among multiple agencies or interests in the state apparatus (Shirk Reference Shirk1993). The maintenance of such coalitions depends on a key mechanism – feedback from the practice of village elections. Positive feedback – the reduction of political tensions and crises in the rural areas, the effectiveness of political control, and positive appraisals from the international community – would help maintain and strengthen the political coalition in this area and encourage further promotion of village elections, whereas negative feedback – increasing contention in the rural areas and the undermining of political control, among others – would weaken the political coalition and induce policy shifts in different directions. Thus: State policies evolve in response to feedback from the implementation process. Positive feedback encourages the state to develop more elaborate policies and to strengthen enforcement, and vice versa.

In summary, the state logic introduces both exogenous and endogenous factors to village elections: The presence of inconsistent even conflicting policies introduce the possibility of exogenous shocks outside of the immediate village election arena, whereas the feedback loop implies an endogenous process that can be best understood by looking into the interplay among state policies and other parties involved in the process of change over time. In this light, an explication of the state logic requires that we sharpen our analytical focus in two respects: First, we need to broaden our analysis of the state and state policies beyond the immediate area of village elections and attend to other policy areas and government agencies whose goals and policies may indirectly affect village elections. Second, we need to look closely into the ways in which the multitude of goals and interests reflected in policymaking interacts with the local governments and the villagers, to which we now turn.

The Bureaucratic Logic

State policies are implemented through the local governments. Although there is only a nominal role for local governments in the “Organic Law,” local governments are nevertheless one of the key players, oftentimes the decisive player, in this process. The township government is the main organizer of the village elections in its jurisdiction: It decides on when, where, and how the village elections are to be carried out, and it sends its work teams into the villages to directly organize the elections, safeguarding the procedural rules. Empirical studies reveal a variety of government behaviors over time and across localities, ranging from imposition, manipulation, and indifference, to the active safeguarding of procedural fairness (Edin Reference Edin2003, O’Brien and Li Reference O’Brien and Li1999, Perry and Goldman Reference Perry and Goldman2007). How do we make sense of the varieties of bureaucratic behavior in this area?

Varied as it may be, I submit, local cadre behavior follows a stable bureaucratic logic. Organizational behavior is induced by the incentive mechanisms in organizations and the environment to which they must adapt (Scott and Davis Reference Scott and Davis2007). Local bureaucrats face a task environment consisting of multiple policies and administrative fiats to which they must respond or with which they must cope in their daily work. As I argue in Chapter 6, among the multiple goals that local officials face in their daily work, getting things done is the most important because of the dominance of the political logic. The centralization of authority in the Chinese bureaucracy implies that local bureaucrats heavily depend on their supervising agencies for evaluations, promotions, and other favorable career moves. The primary concerns of the chief bureaucrats in the township government are to implement the top-down policies such that there is no negative consequence for their own career advancement. Therefore, a key component of the bureaucratic logic is that: Upward accountability and incentive designs in the Chinese bureaucracy are such that local bureaucrats are sensitive to the demands from above and the tasks imposed by their supervising administration.

Yet, by the bureaucratic logic, we cannot derive the implication that local officials will follow and implement state policies in the area of village elections. Recall that the state logic implies that policies from the central government involve multiple tasks and multiple goals that are often incongruent, even in conflict, among themselves. Even if we confine our attention to only the area of village elections, we can easily see that local governments face multiple, conflicting goals. First, the act of carrying out a village election is itself a challenging task, since conflicts within a village may stall the election process, as has frequently occurred in the past; second, local officials also aim to facilitate the election or reelection of their favorite candidates so as to ensure smooth cooperation in the future; third, local officials are required to maintain “social stability” – a coded term meaning the avoidance of resistance, petitions, or open protests in the election process. These goals are inconsistent among themselves: An effort to promote favorite candidates may lead to villager resentment and protests that threaten the goal of “social stability.” Moreover, if we look beyond the village elections, it is obvious that the implementation of village elections is but one of the many demands – such as family planning, public projects, or collective debt crises, among others – with which local bureaucrats have to cope.

Small wonder that local officials must weigh, balance, and prioritize among the multiple, inconsistent goals and tasks in their task environment. The bureaucratic logic dictates that officials will choose a course of action that can best promote their career advancement or at least that will best minimize the risks to their career advancement. These considerations give us the following proposition: Local officials’ disposition toward village elections is shaped by the relative costs and benefits associated with the implementation of a wide range of policies in their task environment.

This proposition, mundane as it may be, has important implications. It directs our attention to the broader task environment of the local government to evaluate the payoffs associated with the choices that local officials face. To a great extent the role of local bureaucrats in village elections is contingent on the relationship between the township governments and the village cadres, which is dictated by the task environment surrounding the local bureaucrats. Local officials carry out a wide range of tasks imposed by state policies, such as the extraction of resources (e.g., collecting the agricultural tax), and the implementation of other state policies (e.g., family planning regulations), which require the effective cooperation of the village cadres. But the very principle of self-governance is likely to lead to the election of those village heads who may not be cooperative. Local officials have to cope with such tensions in their task environments. These considerations suggest that: The closer the interdependence, dictated by the task environment, between the local government and the village cadres, the stronger the incentive for the township government to intervene in village elections, and vice versa.

To sum up, although the bureaucratic logic is stable, specific bureaucratic behaviors vary significantly in response to changing task environments and incentives in the Chinese bureaucracy. The state logic involving multiple goals and tasks implies that local government officials must prioritize and give selective attention to various tasks in order to cope with environmental complexities. This recognition calls for a close look into the specific task environment that local bureaucrats confront to make sense of the changes in bureaucratic behavior patterns over time.

The Rural Logic

The institutional practice of village election dictates a particular role of villagers-as-voters – the one-person-one-vote, direct participation of every adult villager. However, villager behavior and participation in the public arena are not necessarily in accordance with the contemporary image of citizenship. Fundamentally, rural life is not organized around autonomous individuals. Rather, the logic of rural life organizes villagers into webs of social relations. One way to characterize the rural logic is what Fei (Reference Fei1992[1948]) calls “differential modes of association,” which generate concomitant social circles with varying social distances on the basis of social institutions, such as family, extended family, neighborhood, and kinship ties. As China scholars have shown, such culturally embedded authority was historically significant in the organization of rural governance and interactions with the state (Duara Reference Duara1988, Lin Reference Lin1995, Yan1996). Despite socialist transformation, as Friedman, Pickowicz, and Selden (Reference Friedman, Pickowicz and Selden1991) show, these rural institutions survived the encroaching state during the collectivization era, being renewed and reinforced by everyday practice, through mutual assistance in daily life, in farming activities, and on social occasions such as weddings, funerals, and temple worship.

Land reform in post-Mao rural China reinforced the rural logic. In the era of decollectivization, rural land was allocated to the peasant family, which has reinforced the family, not individuals, as a decision-making unit. Indeed, the size of the allotted land, contingent on the number of adult laborers and the size of the family at the time, has provided the single most important basis on which economic, political, and social relations are established and reinforced. In many ways, state agricultural taxation has been largely based on the size of the land allocated to the family; similarly, contributions to collective village projects are usually calculated based on the size of the land allocated to the family. Economically, the family develops its division of labor among multiple tasks – farming, childrearing, off-farm work, and so forth. Social relations are reinforced through family-based mutual assistance in farming and on other social occasions such as weddings and funerals. Not surprisingly, patterns of social relations, cooperation as well as tensions, largely reflect the logic of rural life organized around family, kinship, and neighborhood.

Scholars have shown that local institutions may facilitate the provision of public goods, problem solving, or economic development in villages (Peng Reference Peng2004, Tsai Reference Tsai2007). But the rural logic is a two-edged weapon, which may also generate fragmented and contending interests within a village. As a distinct organizing mechanism, the rural logic may be in tension with the formal institution of village elections. For example, family-based proxy votes have been widespread in elections. By the rural logic in which the family is the decision-making unit, such a practice is seen as reasonable and legitimate. As many young villagers now work as migrant workers far away from their home villages, their families want to have their voices represented in the election process. As a result, proxy voting practices have been a constant source of contention in the implementation of the one-person-one-vote procedures.

What are the behavioral consequences of the rural logic in village elections? The role of the rural logic is not static; it has evolved along with the emergence of the institution of village elections. In the early days of decollectivization, the rural logic was largely confined to the social and economic areas of village life – mutual assistance in daily social exchanges and farming activities – and it was not extended to village elections. But as village elections became more important in the villagers’ lives, the rural logic provided the basis on which the villagers were mobilized. As a result, the rural logic has become more active and effective, as villagers have learned to better mobilize resources, coordinate activities, and organize interests. These considerations can be summarized as follows: Over time, the rural logic becomes more active and salient in village election processes, in terms of increasingly autonomous voting participation and in terms of extending from the social and economic arenas into the political arena.

The prevalence of the rural logic also amplifies village-bound variations in kinships, neighborhoods, and other social relations. In those villages where kinship organizations are less prevalent, the rural logic may be built on other corporate bases. For example, the collective legacy of the Mao era may facilitate the position of a strong village party secretary; or historical legacies and the revival of kinship institutions may generate leadership on a mixed basis combining political authority and kinship institutions. Therefore, the rural logic is likely to exacerbate and perpetuate diversity in both the practice and effectiveness of village elections across villages.

In brief, the rural logic reflects and draws on particularistic social relations and institutions in a village and, to a great extent, it evolves independent of, and often at odds with, the state logic or the bureaucratic logic outlined above. Hence, the rural logic implies a strong historical continuity that is stubbornly resistant to external intervention. It takes part in the evolution of village elections as a distinctive, independent organizing mechanism.

The recognition of these three logics and their interplay highlight some important implications for understanding village elections as an emergent institution and suggests that it would be inadequate and misleading to consider only one mechanism, without carefully attending to the interactions among these multiple logics and their behavioral consequences. Now I return to the research site of FS Township and take a more systematic look at the changes in the village elections over time, between 2000 and 2008, and illustrate how the multiple logics operated and interacted with one another to generate the observed patterns.

The Context and Overall Patterns

What are the markers that we should use to track and assess the extent of institutional change in village elections? Researchers have examined different aspects of this institution, from voter turnout rate and procedural fairness to competitiveness and the function of the elected village committees. I will focus on the following aspects: first, the extent of participation. Democratic elections involve the participation of ordinary citizens; hence, the voter turnout rate is an important measure of the effectiveness of electoral politics. Second, competitiveness among the candidates. Here the main concern is about the threat of government manipulation whereby a candidate is put forth without serious contention. The more competition that exists among the candidates, the more likely is it that the elections are free from manipulation.Footnote ¹

Third, a key issue in village elections is the relationship between the two lines of authority – the village head and the party secretary. Although nominally elected by the party members in the village and approved by the township government, village party secretaries are in effect appointed and controlled by the township government. In contrast, members of the village committee, including the village head, are elected by popular vote in village election. Therefore, the village head and the party secretary represent two lines of authority with distinct bases of legitimacy: The former is based on bottom-up popular support, and the latter is based on top-down government imposition. Historically, villages during the socialist collective era (the “production brigade” as they were then called) were organized into a people’s commune. It was conventional then that the village party secretary wielded power, with the village head (the head of the production brigade) playing the role of second fiddle. This practice continued into the post-Mao decollectivization era. Therefore, one important indicator of the effectiveness of village elections is the extent to which the relationship between the two lines of authority has evolved. In the late 2000s, in response to tensions between the party secretary (cunzhishu) and the elected village head (cunzhuren), the central government has advocated the so-called “one-shoulder” (yijiantiao) policy; that is, occupancy of both positions by the same person. This policy has important consequences for village elections, as we will illustrate below.

My analysis focuses on elections after the amendment of the “Organic Law” in 1998, when the formalization and enforcement of village elections were greatly strengthened.Footnote ² Figure 10.1 shows changes in the turnout rate and competitiveness across the four elections cycles between 2000 and 2008.Footnote ³ Here, “percent turnout” is measured as the percentage of eligible voters in a village who actually cast their votes in an election; “percent competitiveness” is measured as the percentage of votes that the elected village head received out of the total number of eligible voters. The higher the percentage, the lower the competitiveness. As we can see, over time the level of participation has changed considerably. In the early days when the local government exerted strong control, the turnout rate was high and variation was low across villages. Across the first three election cycles, the mean rate of participation was over eighty percent. But there were significant changes in the last two cycles, especially in 2008, with noticeably greater variations in participation across villages. The trend of competitiveness shows a similar trend of increasing variation over the years. In the early phase of 2000, the elected village head received a lower percentage of votes than in the later years, with lower variations across villages, indicating a more homogeneous but lower level of popular support for those candidates who were promoted by the township government. In contrast, by 2008 the level of competitiveness was considerably higher than in the previous years, with much larger variations across villages. Clearly, there are significant changes in both the turnout rate and competitiveness over the four election cycles.

Figure 10.1. Boxplot of share of turnout and competitiveness

Let us now take a look at the relationship between the two lines of authority across village elections. Figure 10.2 shows, across the four election cycles, the proportion of the three types of elected village head: (1) the “one-shoulder” position, where one person “shoulders” both the party secretary and the village head positions; (2) being elected as village head only – often an indication of a popular leader independent of the party secretary; (3) being a village head and, at the same time, also serving as a member of the village party committee. Again, we find significant variations over time, indicating important dynamics of change in the relationship between the two lines of authority. I will provide substantive interpretations of these patterns below.

Figure 10.2. Changes in authority relationships over time

Tracking changes along these markers over time, we observe the evolution of village elections as an emergent institution: Over the years, village elections have become more substantive and meaningful, mirroring the increasingly intensive competitiveness, diversity, and nonlinear paths of change among these villages. I now turn to discuss, in chronological order, how the consideration of multiple institutional logics helps us to account for the observed patterns of change in village elections, and the implications for studying the processes of institutional change in general.

2000: The Manipulated Election

The first election cycle after adoption of the amended “Organic Law” took place in 2000. By 2000, rural China had experienced two decades of decollectivization, which returned farming decisions to the peasant households. However, the Communist Party’s political dominance was still unrivaled; local governments played an active role in implementing state policies – collecting agricultural taxes, enforcing family planning regulations, and engaging in various public projects. Village cadres, led by the party secretary, forged close ties with the township government. At the same time, the rural logic, long suppressed during the collective era (Friedman, Pickowicz and Selden Reference Friedman, Pickowicz and Selden1991) became active in the economic and social arenas by coordinating farming and social events, but it had not yet been extended to the political arena.

What was the role of the state in village elections at this juncture? The state logic outlined above suggests that state policies reflect multiple and conflicting goals and interests. This was indeed the case. If we only look at state policies in the area of village elections, we would get the impression of strong policy advocacy for village self-governance: Building on the momentum of the recent passage of the amended “Organic Law,” the proponents of village elections in the central government (especially those in the Ministry of Civil Affairs) actively mobilized for enforcement of the “Organic Law,” with detailed procedures and regulations developed and elaborated upon through various levels of the local governments. The main message was loud and clear: Village elections should follow the formal procedures prescribed in the “Organic Law,” and village affairs should be managed by self-governance through the elected village committee. But this was not the only voice. There were other, even louder, “voices” from other parts of the central government, in the form of other policies and bureaucratic fiats that ran counter to the very principle of village self-governance. This was also the period when the state exerted strong efforts to extract resources from the rural areas through taxation and other fees, and state policies in other areas such as family planning also pushed local governments deep into village affairs.

On the ground, then, local bureaucrats faced a task environment characterized by multiple and conflicting goals. In addition to the task of village elections, local governments faced more urgent pressures from above – to actively collect agricultural taxes, to enforce family planning, and to carry out other public projects – all of which required effective cooperation from the village cadres. These tasks entailed competing goals: Whereas village elections aimed at promoting autonomous village leaders to manage village affairs, other government tasks demanded more compliance from village leaders in the implementation of state policies.

How did the township government respond to these inconsistent demands in its task environment? The bureaucratic logic dictates that local officials prioritize and weigh among the multiple tasks in accordance with their prospects for career advancement or avoidance of severe penalties that might stall their careers. This was not a difficult choice for local bureaucrats. Above all, effective control of village affairs, and hence control of village elections, was critical for township governments, because the fiscal policy of the time dictated that the collection of agricultural taxes and fees would be the main source of the local government budget. During this early phase of village elections, as noted above, the legacy of the collective era still exerted a strong influence. Within the village, the party secretary was the center of authority, and the elected village committee, together with the village head, played at best the role of second fiddle. Moreover, long suppressed during the collectivization era, the kinship-based rural logic was not yet activated in the political sphere of electoral competition. All in all, there was little cost but great benefit for the township government to intervene in the election process and to shape its outcome.

Thus, the township government made all-out efforts to intervene and shape the outcomes of the village elections. In almost all cases, the township government handpicked the key candidates for the village committee and the township government work team actively promoted these candidates during the village election meetings. In the immediate aftermath of the collective era, villagers were generally receptive to government advocacy.

What emerged from this episode was a pattern of village election processes and outcomes that represented a strong continuity with the past, with the party secretary still at the center of authority and the village elections largely a symbolic gesture. This was clearly reflected in the election patterns. On the one hand, as Panel 1 in Figure 10.1 shows, there was a high turnout rate (over eighty percent) with small variance across villages and a highly homogenous pattern resulting from the strong grip of the township government over the election process. On the other hand, the elected village head received a low number of votes, reflecting passive involvement and a low level of popular support among the villagers.

As a legacy of the collective era, it was conventional practice at the time that the position of party secretary and that of village head were separate and would be occupied by two separate persons. The first panel of Figure 10.2 shows that, of the twenty-seven villages, the share of villages where one person held the “one shoulder” position was small. Party secretaries in ten villages did not even participate in the village election. Party secretaries did participate in the elections in the other seventeen villages, but in most cases their presence as candidates was merely a token to make up the requirement of multiple candidates for each position. Only seven party secretaries (mostly in small villages where there was a tradition of one person taking the positions of both party secretary and village head) were elected to be the head of the village committee. Those party secretaries who were not elected to be the village head did not lose the elections; rather, the candidates for village heads were handpicked by the township government and by the party secretaries in these villages. A close look at the election records shows that in some villages, the party secretaries received a higher number of votes during the preliminary election but they persuaded the villagers to vote for their handpicked candidates for village head during the second round. This interpretation is consistent with the fact that nine village heads were also members of the party committee under the leadership of the party secretary, a common practice in the collective era.

To put these patterns in the larger context, the election cycle of 2000 was characterized by a continuation of the traditional patterns of party dominance embodied in the active role of local governments, with the state logic characterized by multiple and competing goals and interests, and minimal involvement of the rural logic. These institutional conditions created the task environment and set the parameters of the costs and benefits for the local bureaucrats to prioritize and balance their multiple tasks. Under these circumstances, the bureaucratic logic led to an active role of the township government in the village election processes and in manipulating the election outcomes. In hindsight, however, the manipulated elections had two important, unintended consequences: First, the fact that the village elections showed a strong institutional continuity provided positive feedback, and much-needed reassurance, to the central government for the maintenance of a political coalition to continue the promotion of village elections. Second, symbolic as these election events were at the time, the rules and procedures of the elections, along with the expectations and opportunities, were being practiced and institutionalized, providing a stable and recurrent occasion for future interactions among these multiple logics.

2003: The Contentious Election

By 2003, rural China had entered a period of contention and resistance. State efforts to extract resources had induced an active role for local governments and village cadres and, at the same time, they fermented tensions between local authorities and villagers. Nationwide, both the abuse of power and open protests against local authorities were on the rise. In FS Township, a sharp increase in agricultural taxes and fees in the late 1990s led to widespread popular protests in the villages. By the early 2000s, the township government was unable to collect agricultural taxes in one-third of the villages, and it collected only some of the taxes in another one-third of the villages.

Not surprisingly, the 2003 election echoed the larger, contentious context. As villagers protested against taxation and the abuse of power by local authorities, village elections became one of the very few legitimate opportunities through which they could voice their grievances and seek leaders who could represent their interests. On the one hand, these efforts led to an extension of the rural logic to the political arena, triggering active mobilization among families and kinships in the village elections. On the other hand, rising contention created tremendous challenges for the township government to carry out state policies. Given the demanding tasks of tax collection imposed from above, coupled with the increasing resistance from below, the township government made even greater efforts to ensure the desirable outcomes of the village elections. In this context, it was inevitable local bureaucrats and villagers were on a collision course and there would be serious crashes between the two. As the above case of Bao Village shows, the party secretary’s bullying behavior in the village triggered a popular protest led by villager Mr. Ren. Through a series of petitions and open confrontations, the township government was forced to remove the village party secretary, toppling both the party committee and the village committee. In the ensuing village election of 2003, Ren challenged the township government manipulation and ran his own campaign for village committee. He defiantly announced over loudspeakers that, if elected, he would lead the villagers to resist the government tax collection. Thus, he was elected to head an entirely new village committee.

This instance was not an isolated case. Such tensions and confrontations were present in other villages as well. As we see in Figure 10.1, although the turnout rate in 2003 was similar to that in 2000, there was a significant increase in popular support for the village head. To interpret this pattern, note that, as shown in Panel 2 of Figure 10.2, the percentage of stand-alone village heads increased significantly in 2003, as did the percentage of “one-shoulder” roles, because the township government made an effort to take control in some villages. Of the twenty-seven villages in FS Township, fifteen (fifty-six percent) of the village heads were replaced. The outcomes were heterogeneous: Some reflected successful government manipulation, but a much larger proportion resulted from challengers, as exemplified by Mr. Ren, running in defiance of government meddling. Compared with the previous episodes, the year 2003 marked a significant change in village elections – from a ceremonial occasion to a substantial and contentious event, and a change in the villagers – from passive to active participants.

In this episode we saw the active involvement of local bureaucrats, village cadres, and villagers. Let us now make sense of such behavior by considering the interplay of the multiple logics involved. As alluded to before, the active involvement of the local bureaucrats was dictated by the bureaucratic logic in that the heavy tasks dictated by state policies reinforced the interdependence of the township government and the village cadres, thereby providing an incentive for local governments to actively seek and promote their favorite candidates in the village elections. At the same time, tensions in the rural areas activated the rural logic in defiance of the local governments, and the village elections provided an opportunity for the villagers to legitimately mobilize and to voice their grievances. In this process, the rural logic gained momentum, partly due to the fact that the occasion of a routinized election provided an enlarged public space for political action and partly because repeated participation in the elections increased the villagers’ awareness of their collective voices. Activation of the rural logic also increased the cost of government manipulation, as open protests and petitions seriously challenged the ability of the local authorities to govern.

Ironically, both the township government and the discontented villagers found support from the state – or dissonant voices in the state. Local officials derived their authority from the intrusive state to intervene in village affairs, whereas rebellious villagers often evoked the rules and procedures in the “Organic Law” and related state policies to challenge the meddling attempts by the township government (O’Brien and Li Reference O’Brien and Li2006). As one official recalled: “These villagers often know more about the election regulations than we cadres know. They can challenge us if we are not careful about what we say or do.” The state logic, with its multiple goals and voices, fueled conflicts among villagers, village cadres, and local governments, unwittingly fostering a governance crisis in the rural areas.

One significant consequence of the 2003 election cycle was the rising tensions between the two authority lines in the village – the village committee and the village party committee. As a large number of independent village heads were elected into office, relationships between the village head and the village party secretary faced considerable strains, casting a long shadow on rural governance even after the village elections were over. These tensions, echoing ongoing contention and protests in the rural areas, sowed the seeds for future changes in rural China.

2006: Safeguarding Procedural Fairness

By 2006, major changes had taken place in the rural areas that significantly altered the institutional context of village elections. In particular, the succession of top leaders in the central government – the new leadership under Hu Jintao as general secretary of the Communist Party and Wen Jiabao as premier – led to a series of policy reorientations, including the abolition of the agricultural taxes and other fees in the rural areas. These policy changes had several important consequences: (1) Tensions in the rural areas, especially between local governments and villagers, were greatly reduced; (2) the interdependence of the township government and the village cadres was significantly weakened. Although these policy changes were made with no consideration at all of the village elections, their impacts on the village elections were felt immediately, as we see below.

One important policy change in 2006 was promotion of the “one-shoulder” policy – advocacy of one person occupying the positions of both party secretary and village head. This was largely an improvised response of the central authorities to tensions and conflicts between the two lines of authority in village governance during the previous years, but it had important consequences. Because the village elections were no longer controlled by the township government, compliance with the “one-shoulder” policy meant that the voice of the person popularly elected as the village head was now given more weight in the choice of the party secretary. In other words, the choice of the party secretary was now linked to one’s popular vote in the village elections. This rendered more legitimacy to the village elections and also posed a threat to those party secretaries who could not win the popular vote in the village elections. More importantly, this policy constrained the township government’s authority to select the village party secretary.

These institutional conditions led to significant changes in the task environment of the local government, hence in its ensuing bureaucratic behavior. Abolition of the agricultural taxes and fees meant that the township government no longer had to rely on the village cadres to carry out the most challenging tasks in the villages; in fact, there were few tasks that involved interactions between the township government and the village cadres. Moreover, the emphasis on “social stability” by the new leadership became a priority among the multiple tasks that dictated bureaucratic behavior, further discouraging the local government from intervening in village affairs and thus possibly avoiding the triggering of confrontations and protests.

At the same time, the active rural logic greatly increased the cost of government manipulation. Through repeated village elections, by 2006 villagers came to recognize that village elections did matter and elected village cadres played an important role in decision-making, and that village elections were a viable channel to voice their complaints and to challenge those cadres who had lost their trust. As a result, there was active mobilization among the villagers in the election processes, and the rural logic became increasingly effective and assertive. As one village head put it: “If I want, I can easily get reelected. I have been helping folks in the village for all these years. In the last three years, I was involved in the funerals for several dozen families. Each family has at least twenty-some kinship members, and they can be easily brought to vote for me.”

Under these changing institutional conditions, the bureaucratic logic induced the township government to make a significant change in prioritizing its tasks and to shift from active intervention to the role of safeguarding procedural integrity. Procedural fairness was used as a weapon for maintaining “social stability.” The township government adopted a wide range of tactics – the presence of police cars, uniformed policemen, videotaping, work team arrangements, and so forth – to intimidate and deter the potential disruption of the election proceedings and to ensure smooth completion of the election process. Along with this shift, the township government adopted a new disposition toward the village elections. First, there was an emphasis on procedural fairness. It is interesting to note that the township officials came to use procedural fairness as a deterrence weapon to ensure that the village elections were successfully carried out and to deter those protestors from interrupting the election proceedings. This was done even at the expense of their preferred candidates. Second, although the township government still tried to promote their own candidates, they were refrained from directly intervening or overtly manipulating the results. In fact, a frequently used open statement made by the government work teams at the village election meetings was as follows: “We are here to ensure procedural fairness; we do not care about who gets elected. You voters make that choice.” In the few cases where the government tried to manipulate the results, none were successful. In one village the villagers reelected the village head despite various efforts by the township government to discredit him. In another village, villagers insisted that the township government address the problems in the village before they would participate in the election.

One important consequence of the 2006 election was a shift in the authority relationship between the village head and the party secretary. As the rural logic became more salient, we observed a larger variation in both the turnout rate and popular support across villages, as shown in the pattern observed in Figure 10.1. Moreover, as Panel 3 in Figure 10.2 shows, a large number of elected village heads also assumed the party secretary position. Eight (thirty percent) of the party heads came from the candidates who were elected to be village heads, not from the party heads. Among the newly elected village heads, eighty percent of them eventually (i.e., within their three-year duration as village head) assumed the position of party secretary in their respective villages. In other words, the new “one-shoulder” policy significantly shifted the center of authority from a top-down appointment to a bottom-up election, from the party secretary position to the village head position. These patterns occurred in tandem with the broader shift in the role of the township government from manipulating outcomes to safeguarding procedures, and with a more assertive role of the rural logic in the election process. These major changes were induced by the interplay among the multiple logics as well as by significant changes in state policies that were not immediately related to village elections.

2008: The Year of Readjustment

The next election cycle, due in the spring of 2009, occurred a few months early, in late December 2008. The general trend of government withdrawal from village affairs had continued since 2006. The township government was charged with the new tasks of developing commercial centers and other nonagricultural sectors in the township. At a township government meeting in 2007, the message of the township party secretary to the village heads was loud and clear: “Now that the state will no longer ask for anything from your village, we [the township government] do not have many tasks for you to do. All you have to do is to manage your village affairs well and maintain social stability.” This was clearly indicative of the further weakening of the interdependence between the township government and the village cadres.

This is not to say that the township government was merely a bystander in village elections. After all, it still had responsibility to see to it that the village elections were carried out smoothly, and local officials still had to work with the elected village cadres on a range of issues: land development, the infusion of government resources into the village, and social stability. Furthermore, the township government still faced high uncertainty from the village elections – potential disruptions of the election process, the selection of unfavorable village heads, or confrontation and conflicts that might spill over to open petitions and protests. The higher authorities continued to advocate the “one-shoulder” policy of combining the position of party secretary and village head into one person, with a policy target of eighty percent. Thus, the township officials made considerable efforts to work behind the scenes and, as usual, they organized work teams for the election.

Against this larger context, several important changes characterized the 2008 village election cycle in FS Township. First, unlike during the previous election cycles when there was a high frequency of grievous villagers trying to disrupt the village elections in order to have their voices heard, in 2008 almost all the villages experienced smooth election processes without major disruptions. One government official characterized this new situation as “order-based competition” (youxu jingzheng). In the early days, village elections were seen as being manipulated by the local government; hence, grievous villagers wanted to disrupt this process to draw attention to their cause. By 2008 villagers accepted the elections as a legitimate occasion to compete and challenge the village authorities through formal procedures. On this account, both the local government and the villagers came to embrace the institution of village election.

Second, as seen in Figure 10.1, we have also witnessed marked variations in the turnout rate and in the competitiveness across villages. In some villages, the candidates were not controversial, and there was a high turnout rate and a smooth election process. In others the election was intense and contentious, over the selection of the candidates and the implementation of the formal election procedures. During my field observations, I also found considerable variations – often the same procedure was implemented in widely different ways even in two neighboring villages. Interestingly, the extent to which the election procedures were implemented followed a predictable pattern: The more competitive the election was, the more strictly the procedures were implemented. In one village where there were threats of disruption on the part of the challenger, the township government and the incumbent village committee made sure that the election procedures were followed to the letter. For example, it was required that all absentee ballots went through a formal process of proxy vote registration. Additionally, information about the registered proxy vote representation was posted on a wall for public review. In contrast, in another village not far away but where there were no threats of disputes, the formal procedures were largely ignored. Proxy voting was carried out unchecked, with one person carrying seven or eight proxy votes, well beyond the official limit of no more than two proxy votes, and without the required proxy vote registration. To a large extent, such variations reflect the diverse paths of governance across villages, indicative of the dual trends of the declining influence of the township government and the increasing assertiveness of the rural logic.

Finally, we also observed tensions between the party secretary and the village head positions, as shown in Panel 4 of Figure 10.2, where there is a drop in the percentage of “one-shoulder” positions in the 2008 election. On the one hand, the “one-shoulder” policy still exerted strong pressures on those party secretaries who could not win the popular vote in the village elections. In one village, the party secretary stood for village election but did not receive enough votes to move beyond the preliminary round of the election. As a result, he quit his position as party secretary. On the other hand, tensions between the township government and the elected village heads also loomed large. Whereas ninety percent of the new village heads eventually took over the position of party secretary in 2006, fewer than twenty percent did so in the 2008 election. The field research shows that this pattern largely resulted from the fact that the increasing dominance of the rural logic had led to the election of those village heads who were unacceptable to the township government, reflecting the tensions between the township government on the one hand and the more autonomous village head on the other. As a result, the actual percentage of “one-shoulder” positions (sixty-seven percent) was well below the eighty percent policy target.

Making Sense of the Patterns and Trajectories

Over the last two decades, especially since 2000, village elections in this small corner of rural China have undergone years of government manipulation, popular contention, a significant turn toward procedural fairness in 2006, and finally arriving at the phase of so-called “order-based competition” in 2008. One characteristic of this process of change is that, over time, the township government gradually loosened its grip on the election processes and, at the same time, there was a corresponding increase in the salience of the rural logic moving to the foreground on the election stage. These two trends were both propelled by and fed back into state policies, which underwent a series of adjustments during this period. Attention to the context and the interplay of the multiple logics helps us to make sense of the observed patterns. During the early years when traditional government control was strong, the stable institutional conditions produced a pattern characteristic of local government domination, as reflected in the more homogeneous behavior among the villages and the low variation in both participation and competitiveness. However, over time, changes in state policies (e.g., abolition of the agricultural taxes) and activation of the rural logic significantly changed the task environment as well as the costs and benefits associated with local government intervention, leading to new patterns of interactions among the institutional logics. As a result, variations across villages became more pronounced, generating greater divergence in both participation and competitiveness across villages.

The process of institutional change is by no means linear, nor does it always evolve in the same direction. As noted above, a key indicator is the relationship between the two lines of authority – village head versus party secretary – in a village. During the early years when the party secretary wielded power in village governance, the percentage of “one-shoulder” positions was low. This pattern changed significantly in 2006, when there was a significant shift of authority from the position of party head to the position of village head, but it leveled off in the 2008 election. Over time, the share of change in the village head also decreased, as more elected village heads came to office and were subsequently reelected. In particular, those instances of an “authority shift” – that is, a candidate was first elected as village head, but then took over the job of party secretary – are especially informative because they were directly related to the shifts in authority from the party to the elected village head. The pattern shows that this shift was the most pronounced in 2006, when eighty percent (five out of six) of the newly elected village heads assumed the position of party head; in contrast in 2008 the situation was reversed, with only seventeen percent (one out of six) of the newly elected village heads being given the position of party head. The stagnation in the implementation of the “one-shoulder” policy in the 2008 election reflects the fact that the more assertive rural logic was leading to the election of new village heads who were seen as suspect by the township officials. As a result, the township government insisted on appointing those whom it trusted as party secretary, even at the expense of not meeting the “one-shoulder” policy target, an indication of the increasing tensions between the bureaucratic logic and the rural logic.

Village elections are not flawless nor do they fit nicely into the ideal model of democracy, however that is defined. There are still bribes, slanders, and occasionally physical confrontations in the election processes. The local government has been and continues to be actively involved in the election, guarding the procedures but also imposing its will whenever the circumstances allow. These flaws and variations notwithstanding, village elections as an emergent institution have evolved to become a widely accepted institutional practice, associated with specific rules and procedures as well as specific expectations and participation. Moreover, as the 2008 elections show, new tensions and problems emerged over time in the process of change, triggering a further interplay of the multiple logics in the evolution of village elections as an emergent institution.