Varieties of Governance in China: Migration and Institutional Change in Chinese Villages

摘要

While political scientists have written much about village governance and the significance of election reforms in rural China, economists and sociologists have evaluated how rural to urban migration influences those "left behind" in villages such the elderly and children. However, few scholars closely examine how village out-migration directly influences local governance. Jie Lu provides a well-written and comprehensive study on the various types of rural governance and how social conditions, such as migration, shape village institutions and the provision of public services. Drawing on two national surveys, several village case studies and many individual interviews, Lu demonstrates that both indigenous relations-based institutions and formal rule-based institutions can provide good governance, but the effectiveness of these institutions depends on the changing social conditions of villages (i.e. level of out-migration).