County and Township Cadres as Strategic Group: Structure and Policy Effects—Based on a Case Study of Public Policy

Policy behavior of county and township cadres provides an important perspective to understand China rural governance. In this paper, the theoretical framework of strategic groups was used to analyze the relationship between power structure of county and township cadres group and public policy effects from advancing a public policy at the local administration level. According to different autonomy of group target construction and coordinate strategic actions, county and township cadres could be divided into strategic member and peripheral members of the elite. A “Dominate-depend”, non-balanced power structure was formed among group grades. Upward resource dependence, level authoritative value identity, social mobile screening and level authoritative copy maintained the hierarchical order of county and township cadres groups together. Outside strategic groups, companies using structuring mechanisms established links of interest with local government represented by county and township cadres. The behavior of companies and government diminished the publicity of policy and its shared benefits. Facing the government and enterprises structured to form a privileged position, the demands of farmers as the main policy target group were selectively ignored. In rural societies, unbalanced power structure was formed among government, capital and people. Power practice of county and township cadres was achieved in public policy formulation and implementation. On the practical level, a picture of rural social governance was constituted.