At present, in the process of modernization, China has put forward the goal of promoting the modernization of the national governance system and governance capacity. Rural governance is an important part of national governance. How to promote the modernization of rural governance is an important issue that policy and academic circles are thinking about. National practice mainly promotes the transformation of rural governance through administrative system construction, with government administrative departments as the carrier, service provision as the concept, and resource input as the basis. Previous studies mainly understood it from the perspective of the relationship between the state and society or the relationship between administration and autonomy. In fact, rural governance is simultaneously shaped by township Party committees, township governments and village society, so it is necessary to jump out of the dual perspectives of state and society or administration and autonomy, clarify the governance relationship among political parties, government and village society, and explore the practical mechanism and realistic path for political parties to lead and promote the modernization of rural governance through Party building.
Some existing studies are institutional summaries based on empirical cases, and other studies are normative discussions in the framework of comparative politics. None of them can effectively answer how Party building guides grassroots governance at the theoretical level. Based on the field investigation experience of “Party building+” grassroots Party building innovation in Yantai, Shandong Province in July 2019, this paper uses the theoretical analysis, takes the functional perspective of political party governance,and sorts out the governance relationship among political parties, government and village society. It finds that political parties can bridge the tension between administration and autonomy, and provide political leadership and mechanism innovation for the government; andpolitical partiescan also provide political guidance to society, feed back the actual situation and needs of society to the administrative system, and optimize government policies and policy implementation. The important path for political parties to exert their governance effectiveness lies in the guidance of party building, and the grassroots party building also puts more emphasis on governance and service functions. By giving play to the flexibility and complex characteristics of the Party organization to carry out organizational innovation, follow the fundamental purpose of serving the people, innovate the way of implementing the Party's mass line of work and the Party's political training and transformation mechanisms, Party building promotes the modernization of the rural governance system and capacity from the four aspects of governance structure, governance concept, governance mode and governance subject.
Different from existing studies, this paper no longer discusses the organizational mechanism of the innovative work of “Party building+” as the starting point of analysis from the perspective of Party building research, but in the context of the modernization of Chinese rural governance. Combining theories and cases, the paper deduces the “tripartite integration” of rural governance structure led by Party building, summarizes the specific mechanism and general path of the modernization of rural governance led by Party building, and then enriches the understanding of the specific practical mechanism and theoretical construction of the political party's participation in rural governance and social transformation, as well as the specific practical mechanism and theoretical construction of the governance function through the construction of political party organizations.
This paper combines theoreticaland practical experience to provide a path guided by Party building for promoting the modernization of rural governance in the future, and responds to the grand issue of the modernization of Chinese rural governance, which is conducive to guiding the practice of grassroots Party building leading rural governance, and provides a feasible direction for the innovation of future Party building.