Analysis of the Involution of National Resource Input: On the "Administrative Absorption of Self-governance" in the Use of Village Public Service Funds in Chengdu City

Based on the study of the Village Public Service and Social Administration Reform in Chengdu City, this paper explores how the national resource input activates the village self-governance and the resource input shapes the village self-governance under the penetration of the bureaucratic system in the countryside. It has found out that the reform in Chengdu has changed in the recent decade. In the early stage, the village public service funds (VPSF) did contribute to the mobilization of villagers. The resource input came together with the rules input, which resulted in an institutionalized community mobilization dynamics. However, the involution of the use of VPSF has been observed in the forms of the highly structured expenditure of the funds, the high costs of positive governance and the squeeze of self-governance by the administrative tasks recent years. It means that the large input of resources fails in governance capability improvement. As the bureaucratic principles penetrate in the rural governance, the expenditure procedures become increasingly standardized, leading to the squeeze of the village self-governance. On the other hand, the village-level organizations have to spend more VPSF in dealing with more and more tasks from the top-down administration. These factors both lead to the administrative absorption of self-governance.