Bidiyuwu and the Change of its Institutional Mechanism in the Qin and Han Dynasties

The system of organizing common people on a five-family basis was one of the effective measures for the governments of the Qin and Han dynasties to control the grass-roots society.In the Qin dynasty and early Western Han dynasty,the specific social structure and the generalized individual self-awareness made well operative the institutional mechanism of exposing each other's crimes and sharing punishment.From the middle period of Western Han dynasty on,despite its institutional shell,the mechanism of the system of organizing common people on a five-family basis practically underwent quiet change under the influence of the social structure shift and the Confucian ideology.