长期以来, 学界关于村民自治对中国社会变动之影响的研究颇多, 而对于村落社会结构对村民自治制度如何作用的关注较少。村落作为村民自治制度实施的一个基本载体, 其结构要素对这一制度实施产生的功能作用如何直接关系到制度实施的成败, 甚至关系到村落这个“小”社会系统的稳定与平衡。文章通过对东北4个村的一项社会学的实证调查后指出: 在村落系统中, 国家—村组织—村民这三个结构要素在村民自治制度实施过程中的功能作用极不平衡是导致本项制度实施容易流于形式的一个根本原因。并且, 如果各结构要素的作用力发生激变, 有可能导致村落社会系统处于极不稳定状态而失谐。

For a long time most scholastic studies have been focusing on how the villager self-government affects changes of Chinese society; however, few scholars concern themselves with the question of how the village social structure works on the system of villager self-government.The village is a basic carrier of executions of villager self-governments so that its structural elements are directly related to success or failure of enforcing this system, and even related to stability of such a small society.Through a positive research on four villages in Northeast China, this paper points out that in a village system the functions of three structural elements such as state, village organization, villager are extremely imbalanced in enforcing the villager self-governance, which is a main reason to easily make it become a mere formality.Also if the functions of these three elements change violently, the village social system may be pushed into an extremely unstable situation so as to lose its harmony and balance.