From “Text Constraints” to “Governance Momentum”: The Transformation Mechanism of the Effectiveness of Village Rules and Regulations: A Comparative Case Study Base on Four Villages in Yunnan

Village rules and regulations are an important normative form of grassroots governance, carrying the basic functions of regulating village order and guiding local customs and social ethics. However, although the western rural areas have achieved full text coverage, a large number of these rules and regulations remain suspended outside village governance and have failed to effectively translate into practical forces that regulate villagers’ behavior. How to transform paper-based constraints into governance momentum is a practical proposition that needs to be responded in the study of village rules and regulations. Follows the “replication logic” in case study methodology, this paper selected three effective cases, Migu Village, Manglong Village, and Manla Village in Yunnan Province, and one ineffective case M village in Lincang, for system comparison. It constructed a multiplicative analytical framework of “endogeneity × embeddedness × operability”, revealing two pathways to realization: interest re-embedding and social network re-embedding. “Governance momentum” was defined as the dynamic process through which village rules and regulations transform from textual form into the actual capacity to regulate villagers’ behavior. The effectiveness of the regulations depends on the multiplicative synergy among procedural endogeneity, the embeddedness of enforcement mechanisms, and the operability of provisions. Effectiveness is achieved only when all three conditions are met simultaneously; the absence of any one dimension leads to a slide toward formalism. These findings provide a testable analytical framework for judging the effectiveness of village rules and regulations, and offer policy implications for transitioning western rural areas from “full coverage” to “genuinely effective” in the construction of such regulations.