Innovation of Contemporary Chinese Urban Community Governance under the Perspective of Social Capital: Participation of Multiple Subjects Based on Community Proposals

Abstract

To improve the modernization of social governance, the Chinese government has invested a large number of resources and policies into the field of community governance in recent years. This study takes the community proposal in China’s Experimental Zone for Community Governance and Service Innovation as research cases, conducts a multi-case comparative analysis, applies social capital theory, summarizes four different community governance models from the differences of emotional and institutional social capital, and individual and collective social capital, and analyzes the process of community governance and proposal operation with the participation of multiple subjects. The study finds that community proposals expand the possibility of public participation, which is an extremely important reference value for the process of urban community governance and social democratization in contemporary China. However, community proposals are still policy-oriented, administrative, and benchmark-oriented, and the participatory roles and functions of multiple subjects remain unbalanced. The key to contemporary urban community governance in China lies in tapping community social capital, expanding the dimensions of social capital, and creating a sustainable mechanism for social capital transformation.