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1 |
ID:
156519
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Summary/Abstract |
This article analyses China’s disaster management regime at the local level. The article outlines historic disaster management regimes from the pre-imperial era to the present and ends with an analysis of the ongoing campaign for ‘comprehensive disaster relief model communities’. As argued in the article, throughout history Chinese disaster management has been characterized by attempts to combine strong state leadership with active grass-roots participation in disaster prevention and relief work, and different historical circumstances have translated into different kinds of disaster governance regimes with strengths and weaknesses. The current situation is no exception. The current model community drive led by the party-state aims to establish local professional or semi-professional disaster management organizations in every urban community, but leaves the role of civic organizations vaguely defined. While the state’s commitment to local-level disaster management has its strengths, the current ambiguous conceptualization of the role of civil society actors leaves resources untapped.
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2 |
ID:
052030
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Publication |
March 2004.
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Summary/Abstract |
This article has three objectives: 1) to assess the contribution of villager self-government to the development of community councils in urban China; 2) to discuss whether there are lessons to be learned from the experiments in urban community councils relevant to the building of rural communities; and 3) most importantly, to raise theoretical issues common to both villager self-government and urban community councils. In fulfilling these three aims, this article will further understanding of the expansion of grassroots democracy and increasing citizens' participation in China.
The article's comparative approach will incorporate an analysis of the institutionalization of the 'Four Democracies' at the village level and the extent to which they are also being implemented in the different and varying circumstances of the urban experiments and environments. We are interested in whether the villagers' committees and residents' committees, especially the latter in their restyled community status, are training grounds for citizenship. The different human landscapes of village and community, however, will have a profound effect on the nature and exercise of citizenship.
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