Abstract:Social self-governance is an important part of national governance system. In practice, social self-governance institutions often give penalties equivalent to administrative punishments to maintain order, but sometimes violate the basic rights of citizens. The administrative law should pay regard to this phenomenon. Social self-governance institutions introducing and giving penalties with attributes of administrative punishments is democratically legitimate and necessary for the inherent logic and administration of self-governance. However, the legitimacy of these penalties are questioned as they conflict with the Administrative Penalty Law of China. To address the long-standing penalties in social self-governance, we need to adjust the current Administrative Punishment Law in response to the rectification regulation of social self-governance. With the modernization of national governance system and the development of new administrative law, in the revision of the Administrative Penalty Law, we should defy tradition and make institutional response, allowing for conditional introduction of “administrative penalties” by social self-governance institutions, and regulating the three aspects of penalty establishment, penalty implementation and penalty relief, so as to build a social self-governance penalty system that gives due attention to both the autonomy of self-governance and the protection of civil rights.