Research notes on villagers’ committee election: Chinese‐style democracy

Abstract

This paper is based on a field trip to Hunan Province in 1996, as part of a research project I am undertaking on how the introduction of village self‐government and direct elections at village level has affected the political life, political culture, and the public sphere(s) in the rural areas. It gives a descriptive first‐hand account of an election of a villagers’ committee and a village committee meeting, relating it to the general background of the recent political reform in China's rural areas. It then offers a tentative analysis of the democratization implications of this reform.