Abstract:

Western democratic theory, empirically grounded in spontaneously formed and homogeneous communities, emphasizes the necessity of social capital for supervising public authority and ensuring effective grassroots governance. However, China’s urban community governance follows an administrative model, making social capital theory insufficient for fully evaluating its performance. This paper argues that Chinese-style community governance integrates both autonomous and administrative elements, making it capable of fostering public trust in local governments and translating community governance performance into broader government effectiveness. Using a list experiment based on a representative survey of Beijing residents, this study finds that high-quality community governance significantly increases residents’ compliance with public policies both within and beyond their communities. Importantly, this effect operates through political trust rather than social trust, highlighting a positive spillover effect from community governance. These findings offer critical insights into the effective grassroots implementation of national policies.

Key words: community governance, political trust, policy compliance, list experiment, chinese-style modernization