Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No. 5, 2022

 

Construction of Social Integrity and the Reengineering of Grassroots Governance Capacity

(Abstract)

 

Chen Baifeng

 

In dealing with contraventions of social morality and minor offences, grassroots governance lacks legal and effective methods of restraint and faces challenges in governance capacity. The construction of social integrity based on family integrity files and archives incorporates the behavior of the grassroots masses in matters of local governance into the evaluation of integrity, establishes a linkage of responsibilities between different governance matters and different family members, resolves tricky problems in grassroots governance, and rebuilds grassroots governance capacity. By combining grassroots governance with the resources it can mobilize and the discourse behind it, grassroots governance can be theoretically explained in terms of both state power and discourse power. The failure to allocate resources due to financial capacity constraints and the lack of authoritative resources due to social transformation and governance changes have led to the relative inadequacy of grassroots governance power. The social integrity mechanism makes up for the lack of grassroots governance power by creating authoritative new resources for grassroots governance through the establishment of joint responsibility. Due to the transformation of the people’s discourse and the rise of the discourse of rights, grassroots governance power lacks discourse support, but the social integrity mechanism rebuilds discourse power for grassroots governance by connecting with the discourse of “combining autonomy, rule of law and moral governance.” The rebuilding of grassroots governance capacity is essentially the construction and reorganization of state capacity in different dimensions.