Community Chief Steward System Embedded in Urban Social Governance: Practical Logic and Mechanisms

Abstract

Urban governance faces structural characteristics such as large spatial spans and uneven density distribution, and urgently needs micro-institutional carriers with embedded adaptability. The Community Chief Steward System, as a governance unit that combines institutional attributes and action capabilities, exhibits an embedded logic that is manifested in a hierarchical progression of cognition, structure, and function, as well as a polycentric network restructuring, and it embeds the grassroots practical path of socialist core values. Its operational mechanisms encompass nested synergy with self-organizing networks, trust transmission based on reputation pledge, and dynamic calibration driven by composite feedback, while also incorporating the cultivation of civic morality and public spirit. Ecological adaptation focuses on the elastic matching of governance density and carrying capacity, the reduction of friction coefficients across cross-domain boundaries, and the positive feedback loop between institutional resilience and social capital. This paper reveals the intrinsic mechanism chain of this system's embeddedness in urban governance.