How can village norms be made effectively?
如何建立有效的村规民约？

Village norms generally denote what behaviors are regarded as normal in a specific village. In general, all members of the village participate in the process of setting these norms. With a long history in China, village norms have played an important role in traditional rural governance. In 2019, the General Offices of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the State Council published “A Guideline for Enhancing and Improving Rural Governance”, affirming that village norms are still applicable to and very useful for rural governance nowadays. In the subsequent fad of revising village norms, many so-called new norms have neither demonstrated much continuity from cultural heritage specific to villages, nor shown proper adaptation to current challenges and opportunities faced by villages. It is, therefore, not surprising that such a formality has led to a common problem: villagers do not know why they have new norms, and village leadership do not know how to use them.
村规民约通常指乡村社会中的成员共同制订的一种社会行为规范，在我国具有非常悠久的历史，在传统的乡治中曾发挥重要的作用。2019年出台的《关于加强和改进乡村治理的指导意见》强调了村规民约，肯定了其在当今社会依然有着重要的现实作用。然而在修订乡规民约的热潮中，我们发现非常多的乡规民约往往流于形式，既无法传承乡村文化传统，又无法与当下乡村治理有效配合，所谓的“村民们不知晓，村干部用不上”。

This case is derived from Yunyin Village of Xinxing Town of Yunfu City in Guangdong Province. The making of its new norms was contributed by some researchers from Sen Yat-sen University’s Institute of China Regional Development Coordination and Village Building. The researchers facilitated villagers’ deliberative participation in the process of setting norms regarding issues closely related to their daily interests (e.g., garbage classification, sewage disposal, and parking management). Researchers raised three particular guiding questions in the process: (1) What are the things we did that have brought some problems in Yunyin? (2) What shall we do to make Yunyin a better place? (3) What can we all agree to do so that Yunyin can become that better place?
中山大学中国区域协调发展与乡村建设研究院参与了广东省新兴县云吟村“云吟公约”的制定。研究院成员从“我们做了什么使云吟很糟糕、我们要做什么使云吟变得更好、我们应该共同遵守的什么”三方面引导村民就垃圾分类、污水排放、停放车辆、房前屋后等关乎村民日常生活的切身议题展开讨论，村民们畅所欲言，讨论气氛非常热烈，经过修订完善的《云吟村村规民约》得到全体村民代表的一致签名通过。

Noteworthy is that villagers engaged very actively in the whole process of making their new village norms. After many open discussions and debates, they reached a consensus on their new norms (i.e., “Yunyin Village Norms”), a document signed by all representatives of villagers. This case offers two lessons about how to make village norms effectively. First, connections should be built between village norms and villagers’ interests. Otherwise, norm-making would simply be an assigned task, for which villagers would lose enthusiasm in the long term. Second, democratic participation in the norm-making process should be practiced. This would lead to village norms that are more pertinent to villagers’ interests and more likely to obtain buy-in from villagers. Making village norms effectively can improve social cohesion of a village. More importantly, it can develop villagers’ competence in self-governance and even motivate more villagers to participate in the governance of their community.
村规民约有利于培育村民对乡村的认同感和归属感，增强乡村共治的凝聚力和向心力，充分调动村民参与村庄治理的积极性，提升农村民主自治能力。但是，非常多的村规民约制定了却无法发挥实际作用，往往出于以下两个原因。第一，村规民约的制定是完成上级要求的任务，千篇一律不适应当地的实际情况，也不具备长久的活力；第二，制定目的过程缺乏民主参与，无法解决村民的实际问题也因此难以得到广泛支持和遵守。“云吟公约”的制定过程则很好地避免了上述两个问题，这值得我们学习和借鉴。