Elite Participation’s Path on Rural Governance: A Case Study in China

Abstract

As an essential part of national governance, rural governance is directly related to the modernization of the country. Under the background of the new era, as an important backbone of rural governance, the "rural elite" play a particularly significant role. Given that, this paper analyzes the self-assessment of comprehensive quality of rural elites by introducing the Entropy-TOPSIS method. Then from the four dimensions of institutional foundation, role perception, public expectation and external thrust, we construct a Structural Equation Model (SEM) for path analysis to explore how elites participate in rural governance and major influencing factors. The results show that with continuous improvement of the institutional foundation, the public would hold higher expectation for rural elites. Besides, the improvement of external thrust and the creation of a good external environment can be potential triggers for elites to play a positive role in rural governance. We believe that our results are of great theoretical and practical significance for accelerating the modernization of rural governance system and national governance capacity and realizing favorable governance in rural areas.