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Abstract Ensuring social stability during administrative division adjustment is a prerequisite for advancing administrative division reform and a long-standing issue of concern in the academia. Focusing on the relationship between administrative division and social stability, we have analyzed the relevant literature on administrative division, social conflict, and maintaining social stability. Our review shows that this literature has overlooked the social risks associated with administrative division adjustment which can offer opportunities for further exploration of the mechanisms of these risks.
Based on the analysis framework of “structure–process–result,” this paper constructs an analysis chain of “cultural conflict–power conflict–adjustment type–opinion seeking–scale downgrade–resident change” to analyze systematically the social risk problems of regional adjustment. First, the cultural and power conflicts in the structural dimension have a far-reaching impact on the new regions’ social integration and regional stability. The differences in history, culture, and economic strength between regions lead to structural risks in regional adjustment. Secondly, the adjustment type and opinion solicitation of the process dimension involve procedural justice, information disclosure, and public participation in the process of regional adjustment. The satisfaction of the masses with the above situation determines their attitudes towards regional adjustment and further affects the region’s social stability. Finally, the distributive function of the resident change and the downgrading in the outcome dimension have produced differences in the economic interests and public services among groups, resulting in an uneven distribution of public power, shared resources, and development opportunities among regions, and formed a certain threat to the social stability between areas.
Based on the pluralism and concurrency of the outbreak of social protests, we take cultural conflict, power conflict, adjustment type, opinion seeking, scale downgrade, and resident change as conditional variables, and “social risk” as the result variable, then we use the fuzzy set qualitative comparison research method with 20 cases to analyze regional protests in China. We identify the driving paths of “strong adjustment–strong degradation” and “strong adjustment–strong migration” with high social risks, as well as the inhibiting paths of “strong participation–weak migration”, weak adjustment, and strong complementarity. The findings are as follows: (1) Non-opinion solicitation is necessary for high social risk, forming a single-factor path of high social risk. (2) The effects of the six conditions on high/non-high social risk are different, and the causal mechanism of high/non-high social risk is asymmetrical. (3) Multiple paths exist in inducing high/non-high social risk.
We further discuss the policy value and practical enlightenment of the above research findings to administrative division reform. Firstly, the single-factor path of high social risk highlights the importance of implementing opinion-soliciting work to orderly implement administrative division adjustment. Secondly, the two-driving paths of high social risk warn that the practice of administrative division should pay special attention to the type of “high level, strong demotion and strong migration” and respect the geographical, emotional identity and local people’s will. Finally, the three paths of non-high social risk provide the direction for optimizing the setting of administrative division and restraining social risk.
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Published: 28 June 2023
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