Participatory Community Organizing Revisited: Political Involvement and Social Development in Two Post-Socialist Villages in North China

Purpose: Social development, defined as increasing provision of public goods and improvement of life conditions of community members, is an important measure of the success of community organizing (Ledwith, 2005). Members' active political involvement in democratic community decision-making processes is often regarded as a sign of healthy community organizing and associated with positive social development (Rubin and Rubin, 2007). During the recent political reform in rural China, installing an electoral system in villages to replace the appointed system and promoting participatory democracy, counter-cases of the theory emerged. Chu Village and Gold-Bull Village are two structurally similar villages in the same township in north China, but while the prevalent indifference in the former brings successful community projects and life improvements of the villagers, the villagers' enthusiastic political involvement in the latter accompanies slow social development. The gap between the social reality in China and the theory of community organization calls for a careful investigation of the actual relationship between political involvement and community development in the specific social contexts.

Method: Seven-month ethnographic fieldwork has been carried out in the two villages in 2006-2007 and qualitative data of political involvement of the villagers and social development of the two villages were gathered through three ways: participant observation, in-depth interviews with the villagers and the cadres (47 interviews in Chu Village and 45 in Gold-Bull Village), and previous meeting minutes. The data were synthesized to answer what causes the villagers' indifference or strong wills to participate in village politics and how that participation relates to the social development of their home villages.

Results: Chu Village is governed under the recognized authority of the village Party secretary. The villagers willingly leave decision-making for Chu Village all to the trust-worthy cadre. The authority of the former Party secretary of Gold-Bull Village collapsed during the reform, and in the absence of authority, leaders of social groups organize the group members to compete for the cadre positions. The opposite social groups are in constant conflicts, and political involvement in this context is all about protecting the interest of their own group and sabotaging the plans of the opposite, instead of democratizing village political structure and planning for public development. Moreover, although villagers' democratic participation is promoted in the documents, it is never appreciable to the rural officials, who evaluate the village cadres using the criterion of social stability, not the degree democracy is locally implemented. In result, the politically stable Chu Village receives generous state funding for public projects while the unrest Gold-Bull Village receives none, which deteriorates the village's social development.

Implications: The study casts light on the patterns of grassroots state control and community development in contemporary rural China, as well as the theories of democracy and community organizing. In practice, the research shows the NGOs and NPOs worldwide interested in the social experiment in rural China that when they design programs promoting participatory democracy in Chinese villages, they might need to consider whether the villagers are truly empowered through that participation.