Alternative modes of governance: Clans and social instability in rural China

Tongwei Qiu, Yifei Li, Xinjie Shi, Changyan Peng and Biliang Luo

China Economic Review, 2024, vol. 84, issue C

Abstract: As one form of informal institutions, clans have played a significant role in driving Chinese socioeconomic development. However, there is currently no consensus on how clans are correlated with social instability in rural areas. This paper aims to explore the correlations between clans and social instability, utilizing village-level data from the 2015–2021 China Household Finance Survey. The findings reveal a positive correlation between clans and social instability in rural areas. Notably, this relationship follows an inverted U-shaped pattern when considering political distance. Mechanism analysis suggests that clans are accompanies by more social disputes and conflicts of interest in intermediate zones compared to areas located farther away or closer to the local political center. Further analysis indicates that both the decrease in legal governance and the increase in potential interests aggravate the negative correlation between clans and social stability. Additionally, it is observed that implementing the “yi jian tiao” policy in grassroots governance can help mitigate the social contradictions caused by clans and brings positive influence, but the existence of multiple clans is positively correlated with social instability. Our analysis implies that more attention should be focused on the intermediate zones, where an enormous number of conflicts between formal and informal institutions exist.

Keywords: Social instability; Clan; Political distance; Rural China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O17 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1043951X24000257
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:chieco:v:84:y:2024:i:c:s1043951x24000257

DOI: 10.1016/j.chieco.2024.102136

Access Statistics for this article

China Economic Review is currently edited by B.M. Fleisher, K. X. D. Huang, M.E. Lovely, Y. Wen, X. Zhang and X. Zhu

More articles in China Economic Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().