经济发展与竞争性的村委会选举

The 2001 survey in the rural area of Fujian Provice of China revealed that economic development, village collective revenues in particular, played a positive role in the elections of village councilors. With the economic development came an increase in collective revenues as well as differentiation in villagers' interests. Village election thus became an important institutional channel for villagers to articulate their interests. The survey results indicated that it was the collective revenues and the villagers' relative living standards that had stimulated the election participation from the villagers as voters or candidates, which had promoted the effecting of the election system. The following variables were all found to be positively correlated: degree of economic development, amount of the village revenues under collective control, election-benefit connection, election participation by villagers, village election competitiveness, and actuation of the village council election system.