Alternative Modes of Governance : Clan Networks and Social Governance Costs in Rural China

As one mode of informal institutions, clan networks have played a key role in Chinese socioeconomic development, but there is currently no agreement on how clan networks affect social governance in rural areas. This paper investigates the nonlinear relationship between clan networks and social governance costs by drawing on village-level data from the 2015-2021 China Household Finance Survey. The results indicate that clan networks are positively associated with social governance costs in rural areas; however, this effect has an inverted U-shaped relationship with the strength of legal governance. The mechanism analysis shows that clan networks aggravate social disputes and conflicts of interest more seriously in intermediate zones than in areas far from or near the local political center. Further analysis indicates that the village secretary serving as a village director helps relieve the positive effects of clan networks on social contradictions, and the existence of multiple clans could be more conducive to the decline in social governance costs. 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, rather than suppressing clans blindly