Comparative Case Studies of Community Governance Patterns: From the Tentative Perspective of Fractal Theory

Community governance quality is of interest to entire human beings across the globe, as communities are the very environment they are living in, hence deciding on people’s life quality. However, the approaches to an inhabitable community vary and the specific governance patterns of community often differ from country to country. Some communities exhibit strong favor for spontaneous order while other communities obviously result from certain deliberate plan. The list of cross-community difference can go on. No matter what kind of pattern a community has chosen willy-nilly, it is noticeable that the realistic governance pattern for a community to embrace is determined by many factors, such as residents’ mores, external institutions and historical tradition among others. To demonstrate the hypothesis, this paper employs a comparative case study of community governance respectively in USA and China (i.e., the city of Oswego, NY, USA and a few urban communities in China). First, a literature review is given on the significant approaches in China to improving community governance. Then, encouraged by the paradigm of social physics (that is a mindset about borrowing scientific principles to handle social problems), the authors choose fractal theory (especially the relevant concept of self-similarity) as an analysis framework to arrive at the conclusion that specific community governance pattern is usually not freely chosen but determined by the fundamental variables which the community happens to be embedded in. The method of analysis and its subsequent implications are expected to turn out useful in understanding and further bettering the community governance effect in future.