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Authoritarian Deliberation: The Deliberative Turn in Chinese Political Development

June 2011
Perspectives on Politics 9(02):269 - 289

June 2011
9(02):269 - 289

DOI:10.1017/S1537592711000892

Authors:

Baogang He

Deakin University, Burwwod, Melbourne, Australia

Mark E. Warren

University of British Columbia

Authoritarian rule in China is now permeated by a wide variety of deliberative practices. These practices combine authoritarian concentrations of power with deliberative influence, producing the apparent anomaly of authoritarian deliberation. Although deliberation is usually associated with democracy, they are distinct phenomena. Democracy involves the inclusion of individuals in matters that affect them through distributions of empowerments such as votes and rights. Deliberation is a mode of communication involving persuasion-based influence. Combinations of non-inclusive power and deliberative influence—authoritarian deliberation—are readily identifiable in China, probably reflecting failures of command authoritarianism under the conditions of complexity and pluralism produced by market-oriented development. The concept of authoritarian deliberation frames two possible trajectories of political development in China: the increasing use of deliberative practices stabilizes and strengthens authoritarian rule, or deliberative practices serve as a leading edge of democratization.

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Authoritarian Deliberation:

The Deliberative Turn in Chinese

Political Development

Baogang He and Mark E. Warren

Authoritarian rule in China is now permeated by a wide variety of deliberative practices. These practices combine authoritarian

concentrations of power with deliberative inﬂuence, producing the apparent anomaly of authoritarian deliberation. Although delib-

eration is usually associated with democracy, they are distinct phenomena. Democracy involves the inclusion of individuals in mat-

ters that affect them through distributions of empowerments such as votes and rights. Deliberation is a mode of communication

involving persuasion-based inﬂuence. Combinations of non-inclusive power and deliberative inﬂuence—authoritarian deliberation—

are readily identiﬁable in China, probably reﬂecting failures of command authoritarianism under the conditions of complexity and

pluralism produced by market-oriented development. The concept of authoritarian deliberation frames two possible trajectories of

political development in China: the increasing use of deliberative practices stabilizes and strengthens authoritarian rule, or delib-

erative practices serve as a leading edge of democratization.

Over the last two decades, authoritarian regimes in

Asia have increasingly experimented with con-

trolled forms of political participation and delib-

eration, producing a variety of “hybrid” regimes. These

regimes mix authoritarian rule with political devices includ-

ing elections, consultative forums, political parties, and

legislatures that we would normally associate with democ-

racy.

China is a particularly important case; though it

remains an authoritarian country led by the Chinese Com-

munist Party (CCP), its government is now permeated

with a wide variety of participatory and deliberative prac-

tices.

Two decades ago, leaders introduced village-level

elections. Other innovations have followed, including

approval and recall voting at the local level, public hear-

ings, deliberative polls, citizen rights to sue the state, ini-

tiatives to make government information public, an

increasing use of Peoples’ Congresses to discuss policy,

and acceptance of some kinds of autonomous civil society

organizations. While very uneven in scope and effective-

ness, many of these innovations appear to have genuinely

deliberative elements, from which political leaders take

guidance, and upon which they rely for the legitimacy of

their decisions.

Typically, however, deliberation is limited

in scope and focused on particular problems of gover-

nance. Curiously, these practices are appearing within an

authoritarian regime led by a party with no apparent inter-

est in regime-level democratization. We refer to this par-

adoxical phenomenon as authoritarian deliberation, and

its associated ideal-type regime as deliberative authoritari-

anism. In the Chinese case, we argue, authoritarian delib-

eration is conceptually possible, empirically existent, and

functionally motivated. Authoritarian deliberation is nor-

matively signiﬁcant—but, as the concept implies, it is also

normatively ambiguous.

Although we focus on the Chinese case, our analysis

should be understood as a contribution to comparative

Baogang He is Chair in International Studies in the School

of International and Political Studies, Deakin University,

Australia, distinctive professorship (2010–2015), Tianjin

Normal University, China (baogang.he@deakin.edu.au).

Mark E. Warren teaches political theory at the University

of British Columbia, where he holds the Harold and

Dorrie Merilees Chair for the Study of Democracy

(warren@politics.ubc.ca). The authors would like to thank

Lesley Burns, Tim Cheek, Steve Goldstein, Sean Gray, Ken

Foster, Jeffrey Isaac, John Dryzek, Robert Goodin, Alan

Jacobs, Guo Li, Sun Liang, Hua Ma, Jane Mansbridge,

Marc Plattner, Paul Quirk, Lisa McIntosh Sundstrom,

Daniel Treisman, and Yves Tiberghien, as well as the anon-

ymous referees for Perspectives on Politics for their very

helpful criticisms, comments, and suggestions. Previous

versions of this paper were presented at the 2008 American

Political Science Convention, Harvard University, Oxford

University, Australian National University, and Fudan

University. They gratefully acknowledge the support of

Australian Research Council (DP0986641), the Social

Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and

the Shibusawa Ei’ichi Memorial Foundation of Japan.

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doi:10.1017/S1537592711000892 June 2011

Vol. 9/No. 2 269

political theory, an emerging style of political theory that

elaborates normatively-signiﬁcant concepts in ways that

are both attentive to contexts, particularly non-Western

contexts, while enabling comparisons across contexts.

Our

primary aim is not to provide new empirical knowledge of

China, but rather to develop the concept of authoritarian

deliberation from within democratic theory by combin-

ing two familiar concepts into an unfamiliar concept, and

then to argue that this concept helps to both explain and

illuminate a distinctive set of normative potentials and

risks for democracy within Chinese political development.

Our ﬁrst claim is oriented by democratic theory. We argue

that authoritarian deliberation is theoretically possible.

Democracy, as we conceive it, involves the empoweredinclu-

sion of individuals in matters that affect them by means of

votes, voice, and related rights. Deliberation is mode of com-

munication in which participants in a political process offer

and respond to the substance of claims, reasons, and per-

spectives in ways that generate persuasion-based inﬂu-

ence.

There are important structural and institutional

relations between democratic empowerment and delibera-

tive inﬂuence: democratic empowerments ensure that actors

are able to resolve conﬂicts by means of arguments and votes.

However, it is possible for deliberative inﬂuence to affect

political decision-making in the absence of democratic

empowerments, assuming that (authoritarian) elites have

other kinds of incentives, such as functional needs for coop-

eration and legitimacy. That is, the linkages between democ-

racy and deliberation are contingent rather than necessary,

leaving open the theoretical possibility of authoritarian delib-

eration as a form of rule.

Following this logic, we then develop the ideal type of

deliberative authoritarianism—a regime style that makes

frequent use of authoritarian deliberation. In developing

this ideal type, we depart from much of the literature on

hybrid regimes. The literature has focused extensively on

incomplete democratic transitions, especially those involv-

ing regime change from authoritarian to electoral democ-

racy, while retaining many of the elements of authoritarian

rule, including weak rights and uncertain freedoms, weak

rule of law, on-going patronage relationships, weak civil-

ian control of the military, and corruption.

Viewed in

these terms, the Chinese case is distinctive: to date, there

has been no regime-level democratization. Lacking this

kind of regime trajectory, China is not an “incomplete,”

“pseudo,” or “illiberal” democracy, terms often applied to

dynamic cases.

Nor do the terms “competitive” or “elec-

toral” authoritarianism describe its distinctive one-party

rule. The regime exhibits, rather, a resilient form of author-

itarianism that, as Nathan argues, draws its strength from

reforms that increase “the adaptability, complexity, auton-

omy, and coherence of state organization.” The regime is

achieving these capacities through an increasingly norm-

bound succession process, an increasing use of merit-

based considerations in top leadership selection, an

increasing functional differentiation and specialization of

state organizations, and new participatory institutions that

enhance the CCP’s legitimacy.

We agree with Nathan. In

ideal-typing features of the Chinese case as deliberative

authoritarianism, however, we are focusing our analysis

on mechanisms of conﬂict management and decision-

making rather than regime nature and classiﬁcation as

such. Thus we intend the concept of deliberative author-

itarianism to compare to those concepts of “hybrid” author-

itarian regimes that identify supplements to command

and control decision-making. These supplements include

limited elections and institutional consultations, some cit-

izens rights and protections, some local and autonomy,

and segmentation by level policy and level of government.

They result in regime identiﬁers such as “competitive

authoritarianism”,

“consultative Leninism”.

and “con-

ditional autonomy within authority structures”.

These

kinds of classiﬁcations are distinct from those based on

leadership types, such as personalist, military, and single-

party hegemonic authoritarianisms,

as well as from con-

cepts that describe consequences, such as “resilient”

authoritarianism,

although China is most certainly a

single-party hegemonic system that is proving to be extraor-

dinarily resilient. By developing the concept deliberative

authoritarianism, we are ideal-typing an apparently para-

doxical supplement to authoritarian decision-making—

deliberation—that appears to be assuming an increasing

important role in Chinese political development.

As we develop the concepts of authoritarian delibera-

tion and deliberative authoritarianism as they apply to the

Chinese case, we also extend the ideal-typical analysis to

identify the complex ways in which deliberative features

of political development mix with other kinds of institu-

tions and practices, including protests, some rights, and

elections. The analysis we offer here ideal-types a regime

strategy of channeling political conﬂict away from regime-

level participation, such as multi-party competition, and

into “governance-level” participation, segmented into

policy-focused, often administratively- or juridically-

organized venues. We then survey some of the emerging

deliberative features of these governance-level venues in

order to indicate that authoritarian deliberation is empir-

ically existent and (we believe) an important feature of

recent Chinese political development. We next discuss a

key methodological problem: under authoritarian condi-

tions, it is not always easy to distinguish forms of partici-

pation common under authoritarianisms that mobilize

people for shows of support .as in the former Soviet Union,

Cuba, and Maoist China, from those that generate delib-

erative inﬂuence. We argue, however, that the theoretical

categories developed here show us where to look for empir-

ical indicators that would distinguish deliberative inﬂu-

ence from, say, coerced participation.

We then return to theory to ask why would an author-

itarian regime resort to deliberative politics. Our initial

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Authoritarian Deliberation

270 Perspectives on Politics

take is functional: problems of governance in complex,

multi-actor, high-information, high-resistance environ-

ments may provide elites with incentives to rely on delib-

eration in the absence of democratic empowerments, thus

producing a systemic (though contingent) relationship

between authoritarianism and deliberation. These

functionally-driven deliberative developments are not

unique to China: governments in the developed democ-

racies have been innovating with new forms of gover-

nance over the last few decades in response to many of

the same kinds of pressures. Winning elections is often

insufﬁcient to provide legitimacy for particular policies,

leaving administrative agencies with the problem of man-

ufacturing legitimacy through stakeholder meetings, con-

sensus conferences, hearing and comment periods,

partnerships with non-governmental organizations, and

other kinds of “governance” devices.

What distin-

guishes China is that governance-level participation is

developing in the absence of regime-level democratiza-

tion, combined with a high degree of experimentalism

with consultation, deliberation, and limited forms of

democracy.

Finally, we speculate that authoritarian deliberation is con-

tingently dynamic. We illustrate the claim by stylizing two

possible (but not exhaustive) trajectories of political devel-

opment. One possibility is that deliberative mechanisms will

transform authoritarianism supportively in ways that are

compatible with complex, de-centered, multi-actor mar-

ket societies, thus forestalling regime democratization.

Although the challenges are signiﬁcantly greater in China

due to geographic size and vast population, we believe this

scenario to be the most likely in the short term. A second

possibility, however, is that the CCP’s increasing reliance

on deliberative inﬂuence for its legitimacy effectively locks

it into incremental advances in democratic empowerments,

just because they provide a means of broadening and reg-

ularizing deliberative inﬂuence. Under this scenario, democ-

racy would be driven by functional problems of governance

and led by deliberation, in contrast to regime change fol-

lowing the more familiar “liberal” model, in which auton-

omous social forces propel regime-level democratization—

the pattern most evident in the democratic transitions of

the last three decades. We conclude by identifying several

possible mechanisms of such a transition.

The Concept of Authoritarian

Deliberation

Since deliberation is often seen as an element of democ-

racy, authoritarian deliberation is not part of our arsenal

of concepts within democratic theory. The concept is,

however, theoretically possible and—as we suggest below—

identiﬁes an empirically existent phenomenon. The theo-

retical possibility follows from a distinction between

democracy and deliberation. Democracy, as we conceive

it, involves the inclusion of individuals in matters that

potentially affect them, realized through distributions of

empowerments such votes, voice, and related rights. Delib-

eration is mode of communication in which participants

in a political process offer and respond to the substance

of claims, reasons, and perspectives in ways that generate

persuasion-based inﬂuence.

Under most circumstances democracy and deliberation

are structurally related. On the one hand, deliberation

needs protection from coercion, economic dependency,

and traditional authority if it is to function as a means of

resolving conﬂict and making decisions. Democratic insti-

tutions provide these protections by limiting and distrib-

uting power in ways that provide the inducements and

spaces for persuasion, argument, opinion, and demonstra-

tion. These spaces allow for the formation of preferences

and opinions, enable legitimate bargains and, sometimes,

consensus. On the other hand, though highly imperfect,

established democracies have a high density of institu-

tions that underwrite deliberative approaches to politics,

such as politically-oriented media, courts, legislatures, advo-

cacy groups, ad hoc committees and panels, and universi-

ties. Relative to other kinds of regimes, democracies are

more likely to have institutions that enable deliberative

inﬂuence in politics. Whatever their other differences, all

theories of deliberative democracy presuppose this close

and symbiotic relationship between democratic institu-

tions and deliberation.

It is because of this theoretically and empirically robust

connection between democracy and deliberation that dem-

ocratic theorists have typically not focused on the more dif-

ﬁcult problem of identifying and theorizing deliberative

inﬂuence under authoritarian circumstances—with the

exception that increasing attention is being paid to delib-

eration within (nominally authoritarian) bureaucracies in

the established democracies.

For good reason, authoritar-

ian systems such as China have seemed unpromising ter-

rain for political deliberation.

Countries with authoritarian

regimes are, on average, unfriendly to deliberative approaches

to conﬂict, evidenced not only by the (typically) closed nature

of decision-making itself, but also in limits on spaces of pub-

lic discourse and its agents—the press, publishing houses,

the internet, advocacy groups, and universities. The ideal

means of authoritarian rule is command, not deliberation.

The ideal outcome is—to use Max Weber’s terms—

legitimate domination, in which the conduct of the ruled

“occurs as if the ruled had made the content of the com-

mand the maxim of their conduct for its very own sake”.

When authoritarian rule is legitimate, the ruled accept com-

mands because they originate in an authoritative source such

as traditions, leaders, or because the ruled accept the rea-

sons provided by rulers.

Yet democratic empowerments are contingently rather

than necessarily linked to deliberative politics. Theoreti-

cally, deliberation can occur under authoritarian condi-

tions when rulers decide to use it as a means to form

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preferences and policies, but do so without institutional-

ized distributions of democratic powers to those affected.

To identify the theoretical possibility of deliberative poli-

tics under authoritarian conditions, then, deliberation

should identify persuasive inﬂuence about matters of com-

mon concern under a wide variety of non-ideal settings.

In contrast, democracy should identify empowerments such

as votes and rights that function to include those affected

by decisions in making those decisions.

When successful, deliberation generates what Parsons

calls inﬂuence, which he conceives as a

generalized symbolic medium of interchange in the same general

class as money and power. It consists in the capacity to bring

about desired decisions on the part of the other social units

without directly offering them a valued quid pro quo as an induce-

ment or threatening them with deleterious consequences. Inﬂu-

ence must operate through persuasion, however, in that its object

must be convinced that to decide as the inﬂuencer suggests is to

act in the interest of a collective system with which both are

solidary.

Following Parsons, we understand deliberation broadly,

as any act of communication that motivates others through

persuasion “without a quid pro quo”—that is, in ways

that are not reducible to threats, economic incentives, or

sanctions based on tradition or religion. As we use the

term, “deliberative inﬂuence” is generated by the offering

and receiving of claims and arguments, where the induce-

ments follow from the acceptability of the claims and

arguments themselves. Deliberation does not encompass

all communication, and in particular it excludes commu-

nications which simply convey incentives or threats that

are not, in themselves, cognitively persuasive. Persuasive

inﬂuence in this sense can include bargains and negotia-

tions, but only if they depend upon the commitments of

parties to fair procedures and their outcomes—that is, to

rules that can themselves be justiﬁed by reference to claims

to fairness or other normative validity claims.

We also

understand styles of deliberation broadly, as any kind of

communication—demonstrations, rhetoric, or story-

telling—that is intended to persuade without resort to

coercion or quid pro quos.

Importantly, deliberation excludes two other kinds of

communication, a distinction that will become important

later. Deliberation excludes communications that are purely

instrumental, and intended to convey information about,

say, the content of a command and the incentives for

obedience. In this kind of case, the communication moti-

vates only because it references incentives that are external

to the content of the communication. An ideal-typical

example of an instrumental communication would be a

coercively-enforced command. Deliberation also excludes

communications that are purely strategic, in the sense that

the party offering the claim does so to induce a response

to the content of the claim that furthers goals external to

the cognitive content of the claim. An ideal-typical exam-

ple would be a promise made by a candidate solely for the

sake of gaining a vote.

In contrast, democracy refers not to communication,

but a distribution of powers of decision to those poten-

tially affected by collective decisions. Democratic means

of empowerment include the rights and opportunities to

vote for political representatives in competitive elections,

and sometimes to vote directly for policies, as in

referendums and town meetings. In addition, democratic

means of empowerment include representative oversight

and accountability bodies; the rights to speak, to write,

and to be heard; rights to information relevant to public

matters; rights to associate for the purposes of represen-

tation, petition, and protest; as well as due process rights

against the state and other powerful bodies.

Considered generically then, democracies disperse these

kinds of empowerments in ways that those affected by

decisions have some inﬂuence over them. The conceptual

opposite of democracy is “authoritarianism”. Authoritar-

ian systems concentrate the power of decision, typically in

the hands of a ruler who dictates, a military structure, or

at the apex of a single organization structure, such as a

hegemonic political party.

In making the distinction between kinds of communi-

cation and distributions of decision-making powers, then,

we follow Habermas and Goodin

rather than Thomp-

son and Cohen, both of whom view democratic deliber-

ation as a kind of deliberation oriented toward the making

of binding decisions.

While there are very good reasons

for this kind of stipulation—to distinguish political delib-

eration from other kinds of deliberation for example—

our purposes are different. Because we want to identify

the conceptual possibility of authoritarian deliberation,

we need to sort out kinds of communication from loca-

tions of decision-making power. Within democratic set-

tings, the distinction is straightforward: deliberation

often leads to a decision. But the decision itself is (typi-

cally) a consequence of voting or consensus—procedures

that assign each member of the decision-making unit a

piece of binding decision-making power, or authorize

representatives to make decisions—whether or not mem-

bers have successfully persuaded others of the merits of

the decision. However important deliberation may be to

the legitimacy of a vote-based decision, deliberation,

as Goodin argues, is about discovery and persuasion,

and is not in itself a decision-making procedure: “First

talk, then vote.”

In democracies, decisions are typically

the consequence of voting or vote-based authorization of

representatives, not deliberation. Even in cases of consen-

sus, voting still stands as an implicit part of the process—

the moment in which the work of deliberation is

transformed, unanimously, into a collectively binding

decision.

Once we distinguish between deliberative inﬂuence

and decision-making, we can then conceptually describe

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Authoritarian Deliberation

272 Perspectives on Politics

contexts within which deliberation is followed not by dem-

ocratic decisions, but rather by the decisions of (unelected)

political authorities—party ofﬁcials or bureaucrats, for

example. Thus, for example, participants in a process might

deliberate an issue, inﬂuencing one another through per-

suasion and generating a common position which all ﬁnd

acceptable. An authority might then make a decision that

reﬂects and accepts the substance of the deliberation, or

defers to the weight of opinion developed within a delib-

erative process. The authority retains the power of deci-

sion, but the decision borrows, as it were, its legitimacy

from deliberation.

If deliberation and democracy are distinct in theory—

the one a kind of communication, the other a distribution

of powers to decide—they have often been distinct in

practice as well. Historically, deliberation has appeared in

numerous nondemocratic contexts, as in the many instances

in which palace courts and religious institutions sought to

legitimize their political rule through consultative and delib-

erative means, just as early legislative institutions with nar-

row representative bases engaged in deliberation.

Indeed,

deliberation within representative institutions has often

been thought to trade off against democracy: the more

accountable representatives are to constituents, the less

room they have for deliberative judgments, a trade-off

evident in majoritarian, strong-party legislatures.

Like-

wise, today’s democracies have many spaces of deliberative

decision-making that are not democratic in a robust sense

because they exclude those affected or their representa-

tives. Closed jury sessions and hearings, Supreme Court

decisions, expert panels, and many deliberative public

forums all ﬁt into this category.

These non-democratic

deliberations may be entirely justiﬁed by other reasons—

just not by their origins in democratic empowerments, at

least as we use the term here. And democracy, famously,

can be non-deliberative, as it is with any inclusive decision-

making mechanism that simply aggregates preferences such

as voting-based majoritarianism.

Deliberative Authoritarianism as an

Ideal Type

These observations can be ideal typed. If deliberation is a

phenomenon different in kind from democracy, then (in

theory) it might combine with non-democratic (author-

itarian) distributions of power. We illustrate the ideal

types in Table 1, where the terms “authoritarian” and

“democratic” refer to the relative dispersion of means of

empowerment (dispersion, by implication, provides more

opportunities for the affected to exercise power), while

communication can vary from “instrumental” to “strate-

gic” and “deliberative.”. The combinations produce ﬁve

familiar types, and one unfamiliar type, deliberative

authoritarianism.

Working across the table, the term instrumental com-

munication refers to the use of communication to express

preferences, without regard to the preferences of others.

Aggregative democracy describes situations in which deci-

sions reﬂect preferences that are aggregated (typically) by

voting, and communication is primarily about expressing

preferences. Instrumental communication combined with

concentrated powers of decision produces command author-

itarianism, in which power holders use communication

solely to indicate the content of commands.

Strategic communication refers to the use of communi-

cation to express preferences, with the aim of maximiz-

ing an agent’s preferences while taking into account the

preferences of others. Bargaining-based democracy describes

a form of rule in which participants use communication

to express their preferences and to negotiate, and in which

they are able to use powers such as votes and rights

induce others to take their preferences into account. But

when strategic communication combines with concen-

trated powers of decision, we might refer to consultative

authoritarianism, a form of rule in which power holders

use communication to collect the preferences of those

their decisions will affect and take those preferences into

account as information relevant to their decision-making.

Deliberative communication, as suggested above, refers

to the use of communication to inﬂuence the preferences,

positions, arguments, reasons, and justiﬁcations of others.

Deliberative democracy refers to the form of rule in which

powers of decision are widely dispersed in the form of

votes and rights, but the legitimacy of the decision is based

on the persuasive inﬂuence generated by communication,

or the acceptability of the process. Following this logic,

deliberative authoritarianism describes a form of rule in

Table 1

Deliberative authoritarianism

Mode of communication

Distribution of powers of decision More instrumental More strategic More deliberative

More democratic

(dispersed, egalitarian)

Aggregative

democracy

Bargaining-based

democracy

Deliberative

democracy

More authoritarian

(concentrated, inegalitarian)

Command

authoritarianism

Consultative

authoritarianism

Deliberative

authoritarianism

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which powers of decision are concentrated, but power

holders enable communicative contexts that generate inﬂu-

ence (responsiveness to claims and reasons) among the

participants. Power holders are inﬂuenced in their deci-

sions by the reasons generated by communication among

participants and/or by the legitimacy of the process of

reason-giving. Although both democratic and authoritar-

ian deliberation make use of persuasive inﬂuence, the ideal

type implies that authoritarian control of decision-making

involves not just concentrated control over decisions that

may have been widely deliberated, but also—and

importantly—control over the agenda. In an ideal democ-

racy, citizens have the powers necessary to introduce delib-

erative claims into any issue area, and any level of

government. In an authoritarian regime, elites control the

domain and scope of deliberation, and limit citizens’ capac-

ities to put issues onto the political agenda. Authoritari-

anism thus implies that elites control not just what policies

or issues are deliberated, but also the forums, levels of

organization, timing, and duration.

In short, these combinations produce three familiar types

of democracy: aggregative democracy, bargaining-based

democracy, and deliberative democracy, as well as two famil-

iar types of authoritarianism: traditional (command) author-

itarianism, and consultative authoritarianism—a type

increasingly recognized in the literature, and evidenced by

political tactics in Singapore, Malaysia, and Vietnam,

cer-

tain features of the old Soviet Union,

as well as in con-

temporary China.

The unfamiliar possibility, deliberative

authoritarianism—rule via authoritarian deliberation—is

an ideal type of regime that combines concentrated power—

that is, power not distributed to those affected by collective

decisions—with deliberative communication.

For authoritarian deliberation to exist, deliberative inﬂu-

ence must also exist, in the sense that it could be shown

(in principle) that elite decisions respond to persuasive

inﬂuence, generated either among participants, or in the

form of arguments made by participants to decision-

makers. This point underwrites the distinction between

authoritarian deliberation and consultation—a distinc-

tion that is subtle but important for our argument. Con-

sultation, in which decision-makers take into account the

preferences of those their decisions will affect, is pervasive

in most kinds of regimes—including authoritarian regimes.

In China, “consultative” processes often shade into “delib-

erative” processes. As ideal types, however, the processes

are distinct. Whereas “consultation” implies that decision-

makers ask for, and receive information from those their

decisions will affect, “deliberation” implies that decision-

makers will do more than solicit input; they will enable

(or permit) space for people to discuss issues, and to engage

in the give and take of reasons, to which decisions are then

responsive. While many instances of public deliberation

in China today are continuations of Maoist consultation,

they also have distinctive features. Maoist consultations

lacked deliberative element as well as any procedural ele-

ments that might ensure fair and equal discussion. They

served primarily as tools for ideological political study

imposed from above. In contrast, many public delibera-

tions in China today focus on conﬂicts surrounding con-

crete governance issues. There are often norms and

procedures that promote deliberative virtue and ensure

equality and fairness. Some deliberative forums like delib-

erative polling have direct impact on decision-making.

Finally, as we will argue below, these new deliberative pro-

cesses may have the potential to set in motion dynamics

that are potentially democratic even under authoritarian-

ism, owing to the fact that its norms and procedures that

are more reciprocal and egalitarian than those in which

decision-makers merely consult, as well as to the fact that

persuasive inﬂuence requires more deliberate protection.

Ideal Types and the Chinese Case

Ideal types do not, of course, describe empirical cases. But

they do help to identify features of cases of normative

interest. The Chinese case exhibits a mix of types; com-

mand and consultative authoritarianism are clearly evi-

dent, as are some forms of democracy. Indeed, as we shall

argue, it is in part because elites do not possess all the

resources necessary to command or even consultative author-

itarianism, so that the third form of authoritarianism—

deliberative authoritarianism—has been emerging. Its

development should be understood within the context of

a political and administrative system within which the

powers of decision are too dispersed to support command

authoritarianism alone. The dispersions are consequences

of numerous factors, including a political culture with

Confucian and Maoist roots that holds leaders to moral

standards; patterns of economic development that multi-

ply veto players; insufﬁcient administrative capacity to rule

a huge, complex country; and—last but not least—

political institutions that decentralize huge numbers of

decisions. In addition, there are some voting powers, as in

village elections and an increasing number of intra-party

elections.

Citizens have more and more rights, though

the extent to which they are actionable varies widely owing

to the relatively new and uneven development of support-

ing judicial structures. There are some kinds of account-

ability mechanisms, as with the right to vote on the

performance of village-level ofﬁcials, as well as some kinds

of legal standing enabling citizens to sue ofﬁcials, although

such standing is highly uneven. And there are powers of

obstruction and de facto petition; Chinese citizens are

often insistently ingenious in organizing protests or engag-

ing in public discussions in ways that work around ofﬁcial

controls, while leveraging ofﬁcial rules and promises.

Thus, as a ﬁrst rough take on the Chinese case, we

should note that the most obviously applicable ideal type,

command authoritarianism, is not descriptive of the regime

capacities, largely owing to these broad dispersions of

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Authoritarian Deliberation

274 Perspectives on Politics

powers. But it does not follow that the CCP response to

these dispersions maps onto the democratic ideal types.

What we do see, rather, is a strategy of channeling politi-

cal demand that makes selective use of consultation, delib-

eration, voting, and other forms of controlled participation

that, for the time being, appear to be compatible with,

and perhaps expand the capacities of, authoritarian rule—a

point to which we return later.

Table 2 maps this story.

Here we are assuming that political demand is, in large

part, a function of dispersed powers, which we can class

into types of participatory resources—obstruction, pro-

test, voice, rights, accountability mechanisms, voting for

policies, and voting for representatives in competitive

elections—identiﬁed in the left-hand column of the table.

The top row identiﬁes the domains over which these mech-

anisms are operative. Thus, we can ﬁnd many political

devices in China that are familiar in the developed democ-

racies. The difference is that, in contrast to the developed

democracies, the CCP seeks to channel political partici-

pation into the domains of administrative decision-

making, the economy, the judiciary, and—to a very limited

extent—a nascent civil society. Let us call this domain

“governance level” political participation, reﬂecting its

problem-focused, issue and domain segmented nature.

At the same time, we ﬁnd little or no development of

political participation at what might be called the “regime

level”; powers of dicision have not dispersed to the extent

that they produce autonomous public spheres, indepen-

dent political organizations, independent oversight bodies

or oversight through separations of powers. Nor have they

produced open-agenda public meetings, citizen initia-

tives, or—most obviously—multiparty elections. These

limited governance-focused empowerments do not add

up to regime democratization. But they do contribute to

the overall pattern of authoritarian deliberation by empow-

ering domain and scope-limited forms of voice, and there

exist functioning pockets of democracy constrained by

geographical scope, policy, and level of government. The

conjunction of these resources with domain constraints

maps the spaces of authoritarian deliberation now emerg-

ing in China.

Table 2 also ideal types a regime strategy to channel the

baseline political resources—obstruction and protest—

into functionally-speciﬁed, controlled arenas of participa-

tion, typically within the administrative and judicial

domains of government, as well as issue-speciﬁed dis-

course in civil society (the shaded cells), while seeking to

avoid regime-level democratization. In short, Table 2 spec-

iﬁes modes of participation that have deliberative—and

sometimes democratic—dimensions, but which occur in

the absence of independent political organizations, auton-

omous public spheres, independent oversight and separa-

tions of powers, open-agenda meetings, and multiparty

elections.

These distinctions help to identify apparently contra-

dictory developments in the Chinese case. On the one

Table 2

Regime strategies by domain and individual-level resources

Domains of Participation

Governance-level participation

Individual Political

Resources

Regime-level

participation

(Legislative

and executive)

Administrative

and judicial

Civil society

and economy

Obstruction, protest Protests, mass mobilization,

consumer actions, labor

actions

Voice Autonomous

public sphere

Surveys, admin and

legislative hearings,

deliberative forum

Bounded petitions, media,

internet

Rights Independent political

organizations

Some judicial rights Property rights, some

associative rights

Accountability Independent oversight

bodies, elections,

separation of powers

Citizen evaluation forums,

village elections, local

approval voting

Party approved NGO and

media watchdogs

Voting for policies Initiatives, open-agenda

town meetings

Empowered deliberative

forums, councils, and

committees

Voting for representatives

in competitive elections

Multiparty elections

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Vol. 9/No. 2 275

hand, we agree with Pei’s observation that regime-level

democratic change has stalled in China.

Nor should we

identify these developments as political liberalization. The

Freedom House index for political and civic liberties shows

that China’s record has remained almost unchanged over

the last decade. On the other hand, when we look outside

of regime-level institutions, we ﬁnd signiﬁcant changes in

governance, producing a regime that combines authori-

tarian control of domains and agendas with just “enough”

democratization—“orderly participation” in Chinese ofﬁ-

cial terminology—to enable controlled deliberation.

Indeed, what distinguishes China from the established

democracies is not the emergence of governance-level par-

ticipation in itself: as noted above, governance-level par-

ticipation is evolving rapidly in the established democracies

as well.

What distinguishes China is that these modes of

participation, among them deliberative forms of politics,

are evolving in the absence of regime-level democratiza-

tion. Indeed, they are sometimes justiﬁed as an alternative

to “western” adversarial, multiparty democracy.

The Development of Deliberative

Politics in China

The distinctive features of deliberation—responsiveness

to reasons, discussion, and attentiveness to what others

are saying—have deep roots within Chinese political cul-

ture.

Some are traditional, building on Confucian prac-

tices of consultation and common discussion.

Centuries

ago Confucian scholars established public forums in which

they deliberated national affairs.

Though elitist, the Con-

fucian tradition took seriously elite duties to deliberate

conﬂicts, as well as certain duties to procedures of discus-

sion.

These traditions are alive today, expressed in the

high value intellectuals and many leaders place on policy-

making through combinations of reasoned deliberation,

scientiﬁc evidence, and experimentation-based policy

cycles.

In modern China, the Ziyiju (Bureau of Consul-

tation and Deliberation) played a signiﬁcant role in delib-

erating and advocating constitutional reform before the

1911 Revolution in China. During Mao’s time, elites were

indoctrinated into the “mass line”—a method of leader-

ship that emphasized learning from the people through

direct engagement with their conditions and struggles.

That said, as suggested above, while today’s public delib-

eration is a continuation of Maoist consultation and con-

tains elements of consultation, it has distinctive features.

Maoist consultation lacked infrastructures of procedures

and rights, and for the most part failed to achieve delib-

eration of high quality. For the most part, they were elite-

directed exercises in ideological political study. In contrast,

public deliberation in China today tends to be focused on

concrete issues of governance, often in direct response to

conﬂict. And, as we will note later, unlike Maoist consul-

tation, contemporary forums are increasingly regulated by

procedural guarantees to promote equal voice and fair-

ness, as well as norms inculcating deliberative virtues. More-

over, as we will also note, in direct contrast to Maoist

consultation, some processes are directly empowered. But

there are also continuities. The Maoist mass line empha-

sized inclusiveness, equality, and reciprocal inﬂuence

between the people and political elites. Indeed, like the

Maoist mass line, the current system remains justiﬁed by

the Confucian notion of minben (people-centric) rule.

According to this ideal, elites express the voice of and

serve the people. No doubt these inheritances help to

explain why “deliberative democracy” is now a common

topic in academic and policy circles within China, indeed,

so much so that the CCP has developed a system of rewards

for party ofﬁcials who develop new deliberative processes.

The contemporary wave of deliberative practices dates

to the late 1980s, concurrent with the introduction of

village elections and other participatory practices

and

administrative reforms.

Indicative evidence includes

changes in ofﬁcial terminology. In Maoist China, for exam-

ple, participatory activities were called “political study”,

and they were ideologically oriented and politically com-

pulsory. Deliberative forums are now often called kentan

(heart-to-heart talks), or other names with deliberative

connotations. In 1987 General Party Secretary Zhao Ziy-

ang outlined a “social consultative dialogue system” as

one major initiative in political reform in the Thirteenth

Party Congress, followed by a comprehensive scheme of

popular consultation to be implemented in a number of

areas across China. These experiments were derailed by

the events of Tiananmen Square in 1989, which resulted

in a period of authoritarian repression and retrenchment.

Nevertheless, they survived as ideational precursors of

institutionalized deliberative practices, not least because

CCP elites were keenly aware of the damage wrought by

Tiananmen, and quite consciously sought ways of chan-

neling dissent even as they engaged in repression.

In 1991 President Jiang Zemin stressed that China needs

to develop both electoral and “consultative democracy,”

identifying the National People’s Congress as the proper

location of former, and Chinese People’s Political Consul-

tative Conference (CPPCC: a body which engages in often

lengthy deliberations, but lacks either the power of deci-

sion or veto) as the site of the latter.

In 2005 Li Junru,

Vice President of the Central Party School, openly advo-

cated deliberative democracy—as did the Central Party

School’s ofﬁcial journal Study Times, which published an

editorial endorsing a deliberative polling experiment in

Zeguo, Wenling.

In 2006, “deliberative democracy” was

endorsed in the People’s Daily, the ofﬁcial document of

the Central Party Committee, as a way of reforming the

CPPCC.

And in 2007, the ofﬁcial document of the

2007 Seventeenth Party Congress speciﬁed that all major

national policies must be deliberated in the CPPCC. More

generally, deliberative venues have become widespread,

though they are widely variable in level, scale, design, and

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276 Perspectives on Politics

frequency. They exhibit a variety of forms such as elite

debates in different levels of Peoples’ Congress, lay citizen

discussions via the Internet, formal discussions in the pub-

lic sphere, and informal debate in non-governmental

domains. The more formal events can be, and often are,

held monthly, bimonthly, or even quarterly in streets, vil-

lages, townships and cities.

In rural areas, deliberative politics have emerged along-

side empowerments such as village elections, village rep-

resentative assemblies, independent deputy elections for

local Peoples’ Congresses, and similar institutions. Begin-

ning in the 1990s, many villages developed meetings in

which ofﬁcials deliberate village affairs with citizens, an

innovation probably encouraged by imperatives of elec-

tion, re-election, and approval voting.

Indeed, the mean-

ing of township elections was not that elections would

produce majority rule—as we might assume in the West—

but rather that they would serve as a mechanism of

consultation—though in practice they can induce delib-

eration, particularly when issues are contentious.

Elec-

toral empowerments are often buttressed by protests,

obstruction, and “rightful resistance” movements that have

generated pressures for elites to consult with the people,

but which can, in practice, shade into deliberation.

There are some indications that these trends are wide-

spread, though by no means universal. In 2004, the total

number of meetings with deliberative elements at village

level was estimated to be 453,000, a number considerably

higher than the governments estimated number of pro-

tests (74,000) for the same year.

The 2005 National

Survey provided some indications as to the (uneven) pen-

etration of village level democratic institutions that we

might expect to generate deliberation.

Ten per cent of

respondents (298) reported that decisions on schools and

roads in their town or city over the last three years were

decided by an all-villagers’ meeting attended by each house-

hold. By contrast, 616 (20.7 percent) said these decisions

had been made by village representative meetings, and

744 (25 per cent) by villager leaders. The largest fraction—

1,318 (44.3 percent)—were not sure. The same survey

also found that the 547 (18.8 per cent) of respondents

reported that decisions on village land contracts were made

by an all-villagers’ meeting; 524 (18 percent) by village

representatives; 650 (22.3 percent) by village leaders; while

1,192 (40.9 percent) were not sure. The survey also found

that 28.3 percent reported that their villages held two

village representative meetings in 2004 (while 59.3 per-

cent were unsure).

Such ﬁndings indicate that penetra-

tion of deliberative devices such as the all-villagers’ meeting

is at least broad enough for demonstration effects, and

probably broad enough to begin to alter the incentives of

the 3.2 million village ofﬁcials in the 734,700 villages in

China.

While broad data about the uses of deliberative venues

are not available, some cases in rural areas exhibit an impres-

sive density. From 1996 to 2000 within Wenling City, a

municipality with almost a million residents, more than

1,190 of these deliberative and consultative meetings were

held at the village level, 190 at the township level, and

150 in governmental organizations, schools, and business

sectors. Wenling has by increments developed a form of

democracy that combines popular representation with

deliberation.

As case in point is Zeguo township in Wen-

ling, where in 2005 ofﬁcials introduced deliberative poll-

ing, using the device to set priorities for the township’s

budget. Deliberative polling uses random sampling in order

to constitute small (typically a few hundred) bodies of

ordinary citizens that are descriptively representative of

the population. These bodies engage in facilitated pro-

cesses of learning and deliberation about an issue, typi-

cally over a period of one or two days, and can produce

results that represent considered public opinion.

Ofﬁ-

cials in Wenling altered the device by elevating the out-

comes of the deliberative poll from its typical advisory

function to an empowered status, committing in advance

of the process to abide by the outcomes.

In 2006, ten

out of twelve projects chosen through deliberative polling

were implemented. The device has also evolved: in the

most recent uses (February–March 2008, 2009, 2010, and

2011), the government opened every detail of the city’s

budget to participants.

Whereas deliberative venues in rural locales are often

related to village elections, in urban locales deliberative

and participatory institutions are more likely to emerge as

consequences of administrative rationalization and account-

ability.

Some of these accountability measures generate

deliberative approaches to conﬂict. Local leaders are increas-

ingly using devices such as consultative meetings and pub-

lic hearings designed to elicit people’s support for local

projects. Observations from Hangzhou, Fujian, Shanghai,

Beijing, and other urban areas suggest that such delibera-

tive practices are becoming more widespread, with more

than a hundred public hearings per year being held in

each district.

The practice of holding public hearings—a consulta-

tive institution that may sometimes produce deliberation—

has also developed within the area of law. In 1996, the

ﬁrst national law on administrative punishment intro-

duced an article stipulating that a public hearing must be

held before any punishment is given. More than 359 pub-

lic hearings on administrative punishment were held in

Shanghai alone between 1996 and 2000.

Another exam-

ple is the well-known Article 23 of the Law on Price passed

by China’s National People’s Congress in December 1997,

which speciﬁed that the price of public goods must be

discussed in public hearings. At least eleven provinces devel-

oped regulations to implement this provision with ten

referring speciﬁcally to the idea of transparency and

openness, and nine to the idea of democracy.

More than

1000 public hearings on prices were held across China

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between 1998 and 2001.

The Legislation Law, passed in

2000 by the National People’s Congress, requires public

hearings to be an integral part of decision-making process

for new legislation.

More than 39 public hearings on

new legislation were held at the provincial level between

1999 and 2004,

including, for example, a national pub-

lic hearing on income taxes. In Hangzhou, the govern-

ment has developed a web-based public hearing process

for comment on the various drafts of laws or regulations.

Finally, there are some emerging practices that include

elements of democracy or deliberation, but which are

quite limited in scope. They are nonetheless worth men-

tioning because they help to ﬁll out the broader picture

of a polity permeated by a diversity of highly uneven

deliberative practices. In one state-owned factory, alloca-

tions of apartments were decided after an intense delib-

eration among ordinary workers and managers.

Intra-

party elections with secret ballots were held in Ya’An in

2002. There has also been a trend toward publicly-visible

deliberation in the National Legislature, as was evident

in the deliberations over the Draft New Labor Contract

Law in 2006–07. In addition, there have been experi-

ments with participatory budgeting with varying degrees

of participation as well as consultation—ranging from a

highly constrained process in Wuxi to more inclusive

and consultative processes in Xinhe and Huinan from

2004 to 2008 (He 2011). There also instances of delib-

eration among government bodies, as in the case in which

a committee of Municipal Peoples’ Congress now exam-

ines the budget submitted by Shenzhen City. Instances

of rights-based representation are beginning to induce

deliberation as well. In 1999, for example, the ofﬁcial

trade union in Yiwu City began to actively represent

workers, producing effective rights, which in turn led to

broader forums on workers’ rights. And in 2006, the

government funded the Poverty Reduction Foundation,

which invites international non-governmental organiza-

tions (NGOs) to not only to invest, but to engage recip-

ients’ ideas for poverty reduction.

We can make some sense of this high diversity of

participatory, consultative, and deliberative practices by

mapping them according to the characteristics relevant

to identifying authoritarian deliberation. Table 3 distin-

guishes practices by level (local versus national), the extent

of participation, the likelihood that deliberation exists,

and (in bold) the extent of democratic empowerment.

Most practices combine a high degree of government

control of the agenda with either consultation or delib-

eration (indicated by the shaded cells). Participation is

likely to be encouraged in the more local venues rather

than in higher-level venues, though deliberation is increas-

ingly a characteristic of higher-level bodies such as National

Peoples’ Congress. Some of the local practices combine

with limited empowerments—rights to vote, rights to

initiate meeting and organize agendas, rights to equal

concern, and rights to express one’s voice—to produce

highly robust instances of deliberative inﬂuence.

The

overall pattern suggests authoritarian deliberation: that is,

Table 3

Kinds and locations deliberative politics in China

Degree of Deliberation

Extent of participation Domain Limited Consultation Reasoning

More concentrated,

inegalitarian

More local Intra-party elections

Elite-driven participatory

budgeting

Participant-limited

public hearings

Consultations on wages

Trade union

representation

of workers

Local Peoples’ Congress

deliberations on and

oversight of municipal

budgets

More national Standard (closed)

law and policy

making

Public hearing on

individual tax income

held by National

People’s Congress

High-level deliberation on the

New Labor Contract Law

More dispersed,

egalitarian

More local Village elections

Independent deputy

elections in local

People’s Congresses

Participatory budgeting

NGO-led participatory

poverty reduction

Township and county

elections with

consultative features

Rights-driven public

consultation

Issue-limited debate in press

and internet

Electorally-driven

deliberative village

meetings

Empowered deliberative

polling

More national No cases No cases Issue-limited debate in the

press and internet

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Authoritarian Deliberation

278 Perspectives on Politics

a high density of venues in which deliberation seems to

exert inﬂuence, but within the context of government-

deﬁned agendas and formal government control of

outcomes.

A Methodological Issue

Although we can point to instances of deliberative politics

in China, our analysis has been primarily theoretical, driven

by our interests in democratic theory, and related to the

Chinese case primarily by means of theoretically-derived

ideal types. The evidence is primarily indicative, and not

sufﬁcient to generalize about the occurrence of authoritar-

ian deliberation relative to other forms of rule.

Identifying authoritarian deliberation faces another sig-

niﬁcant problem of evidence as well. Because the concept

identiﬁes situations in which persuasive inﬂuence (the

effects of deliberation) combine with authoritarian decision-

making, it will often be unclear as to whether any partic-

ular decision reﬂects the inﬂuence generated by deliberation

or the (authoritarian) power of decision-making.

Identifying the “authoritarian” part of the concept is

not difﬁcult, as the evidence is well known and self evi-

dent. The Chinese state still maintains a Leninist political

structure.

Most power remains in the hands of unelected

elites, operating within the structures of one-party domi-

nation, and without the kinds of empowerments and pro-

tections necessary for democratic inclusion.

Party ofﬁcials

still decide whether or not to introduce deliberative meet-

ings; they determine the agenda as well as the extent to

which the people’s opinion will be taken into account.

They seek to avoid spillover onto non-approved topics,

holding deliberations to speciﬁc topics. Democracy, Pre-

mier Wen Jiabao has said, is “one hundred years away”—

possible only when China becomes a “mature socialist

system.”

But precisely because of the authoritarian context it

will often be difﬁcult to know whether talk counts as delib-

eration. Does the context produce subtle forms of intim-

idation? Do participants self-censor, anticipating the powers

of authorities? Under authoritarian circumstances, it is

also difﬁcult to know whether authorities are merely con-

sulting with citizens, or whether they are inﬂuenced by

their deliberations.

The other ideal types we develop here suffer from fewer

ambiguities. In the cases of the democratic ideal types, the

relative inﬂuence of communication and powers of deci-

sion can be inferred from outcomes; the modes of empow-

erment align with the inﬂuence of communication, such

that, for example, dissent can be inferred from minority

votes, while winning arguments are reﬂected in majority

votes. Likewise, the outcomes of command authoritarian-

ism can be inferred from the powers of decision. In the

case of authoritarian deliberation—and, to a lesser extent,

consultative authoritarianism—researchers must look for

evidence of communicative inﬂuence on decisions.

This methodological problem reﬂects a problem of nor-

mative signiﬁcance: authoritarian and totalitarian regimes

have, historically, mobilized participation to provide legit-

imacy for command-based decisions. There are numerous

examples, from Franco’s corporatist authoritarianism to

Cuba today. The most obvious comparison, however, is

with the former Soviet Union prior to glasnost, which can

be broadly characterized as a form of dictatorship with a

high level of institutionalized participation, as well as the

involvement of ofﬁcially recognized groups in the initial

stages of decision-making.

Stalin, like many dictators,

used professional groups as information “transmission

belts,” primarily to convey information about decisions.

More substantive consultation with groups existed under

Khrushchev, particularly with key technocratic elites,

while under Brezhnev, numerous councils were created to

draw the citizens into public life.

But as Hough notes,

even when Lenin, Stalin, and Khrushchev used consulta-

tive procedures, they “were ruthless in overriding society’s

preferences on important matters.”

In the authoritarian and post-authoritarian regimes in

Southeast Asia, particularly Singapore, consultation is now

a regularized feature of rule.

These regimes seek to gen-

erate legitimacy for policies through public consultations;

they understand the economic beneﬁts of transparent, com-

petent, and clean public administration, and they show an

increasing openness to various forms of NGO participa-

tion within state-sponsored institutions—processes Rodan

and Jayasuriya appropriately term “administrative incorpo-

ration.”

It is likely that consultation is fully consistent with,

and probably functional for, consolidated authoritarianism.

But at the level of broad comparisons, Chinese author-

itarianism differs from cases of mobilized participation:

most Chinese people now have opportunities to exit par-

ticipatory pressures, effectively blunting this political strat-

egy. China’s Maoist past also favors decentralizing judgment

to the people to a degree not found in the Soviet and

Southeast Asian cases. We also ﬁnd widespread induce-

ments for deliberation such as village elections; there are

increasing numbers of relatively large-scale deliberative

experiments, such as deliberative polling in Wenling City.

Deliberation as an ethos is now widely pursued within

representative and governmental bodies.

And yet, as suggested, identifying instances in which

deliberation rather than mere consultation exits suffers

from the difﬁculties of inferring sources of inﬂuence

under authoritarian conditions. But it is not impossible.

Although the burden of evidence for generalization across

China is higher than we can meet here, in principle it can

be met in the following ways. First, cases sometimes

generate counterfactuals from which causality can be

inferred. In the case of the Wenling City deliberative

poll, for example, city ofﬁcials changed their previously

held infrastructure priorities in response to the delibera-

tions, suggesting an inﬂuence that could only be accounted

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Vol. 9/No. 2 279

for by the outcomes of the deliberative process.

Sec-

ond, researchers are developing indicators of the quality

of deliberation,

some of which have been applied to

the Wenling case.

Finally, in-depth case studies, includ-

ing participant observation, ethnographic techniques, and

interviews can document the generation of deliberative

inﬂuence—all techniques used to document deliberation

in the Wenling case.

Such techniques are resource inten-

sive. But to fail to frame the evidence through the con-

cept of authoritarian deliberation owing to these

methodological challenges risks missing what may be a

normatively important dynamic in Chinese political

development.

Why Would an Authoritarian Regime

Use Deliberative Mechanisms?

Problems of evidence aside, let us now turn to another

question implied in the concept of authoritarian deliber-

ation: Why would elites in an authoritarian regime ever

resort to devising and encouraging deliberative practices

and institutions? We should not rule out normative moti-

vations, of course: the post-Maoist, neo-Confucian cul-

ture of China imposes moral responsibilities on leaders to

rule in accordance with the common good, to demon-

strate virtue and to attend to the well-being of the com-

munities they oversee.

Contemporary Confucians

sometimes argue that democracy is a second-best route to

wise rule, given the failures of guardianship.

And a last-

ing effect of the Maoist “mass line” is the norm that elites

should listen to the people.

But even where such motivations exist, they would also

need to align with the strategic interests of powerful elites

and with established institutions for such practices to evolve.

From a strategic perspective, Table 2 identiﬁes the CCP’s

gamble, that opening the participatory venues at the gov-

ernance level will channel political demand into delibera-

tive and some highly constrained democratic venues, while

containing popular obstruction as well as demand for

regime-level democratization. Behind this gamble is a func-

tionalist story, one that, in its broad outlines, is common

to developing contexts. In using the term “functionalist,”

we are not proposing causal explanations—that is not what

functionalist frames do. Rather, they identify broad classes

of problems by calling attention to the social environ-

ments to which a political regime must adapt on pain of

losing capacity, legitimacy, and power.

In the Chinese case the environments conducive to delib-

erative experimentation are largely the result of rapid

market-oriented economic development, which has

increased the size of the middle class, pluralized sources of

tax revenue, created new demands for development-

related administrative systems, generated extreme inequal-

ities and environmental problems, produced internal

migrations, and reduced the overall capacities of the state

to engage in command and control government.

While there is no necessary relationship between the

legitimacy and capacity needs of authoritarian elites and

deliberation (as the history of authoritarian regimes amply

illustrates), there may be contingent relationships under

conditions that limit the effectiveness of command author-

itarianism. For example, the relationship between legiti-

macy and deliberation is sometimes evident in international

diplomacy and, increasingly, within global civil society. In

global relations, for example, power is not distributed dem-

ocratically. But there is often a plurality of powers that

limit the capacities of powerful states and other actors to

impose their wills without incurring high costs. In many

cases, the perceptions of costs are sufﬁcient to motivate

deliberation, despite the absence of democratic mecha-

nisms of inclusion.

By analogy, under authoritarian cir-

cumstances at the domestic level, states are rarely powerful

enough to control all means of opposition. When they do

(as in North Korea), they pay a high economic penalty,

which subsequently limits a regime’s power simply through

resource constraint. In contrast, owing to its rapid eco-

nomic development, sources (and resources) of power in

China are rapidly pluralizing. Under these conditions, rule

through command and control is likely to be dysfunc-

tional because it is insensitive to information and learn-

ing, and will fail to generate legitimate agreements that

motivate participants. Deliberation may simply function

more effectively to maintain order, generate information,

and produce legitimate decisions.

Under these circumstances, some of the incentives for

deliberative politics will be negative, following from the

dispersion of veto players that accompanies development,

as well as from controlled distribution of political powers,

such as village elections. Where there are many veto play-

ers, development-oriented elites will have incentives to

deliberate: to gather information, to bring conﬂicting pub-

lic and private parties to the table, and to forge coalitions

sufﬁcient to governance.

Other kinds of incentives are more positive. Delibera-

tion should be functional for governance, enabling bar-

gaining, negotiation, and learning, and it should enable

the legitimate forms of cooperation that underwrite col-

lective actions in politically complex situations.

Development-oriented elites such as China’s CCP need

not merely compliance, but the willing compliance of

multiple actors. Thus if deliberation generates legitimacy,

even in the absence of democratically dispersed empow-

erments, then elites will have incentives to pursue delib-

eration. If these conditions exist, then we might expect

to see the emergence of what might be called “governance-

driven deliberation”—that is, the use and encourage-

ment of deliberative mechanisms by elites for the purposes

of expanding the governance capacities of the state.

That there are functional reasons why an authoritarian

regime pursuing a development agenda might use deliber-

ative mechanisms does not mean, of course, that it will do

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so. But in China’s case, these functional pressures are real

and immediate. In order to maintain its legitimacy based

on development, the CCP must provide basic living stan-

dards and social services for a population of over 1.3 bil-

lion, which requires, according to the CCP’s own

calculations, a minimum annual economic growth of around

seven or eight percent. Internally, it manages 74 million party

members, a number which—if it were a country—would

be the seventeenth largest in the world. It faces myriad polit-

ical, social, and economic problems, ranging from daily peas-

ant and labor actions to collecting taxes from the newly

wealthy, environmental issues, security problems, and cor-

ruption. These functional demands do not immediately

explain authoritarian deliberative responses. But they do sug-

gest a series of more speciﬁc hypotheses as to why Chinese

political elites might adopt deliberative mechanisms.

First, and perhaps most importantly, deliberative mech-

anisms can co-opt dissent and maintain social order. Fol-

lowing Hirschman’s typology of exit, voice, and loyalty,

the CCP faces functional limits in two of the three means

of controlling dissent. Currently, the CCP controls high

proﬁle political dissent with an exit strategy, allowing dis-

sidents to immigrate to the US and other countries to

minimize their domestic impact. Internally, the CCP buys

the loyalty of party members with senior positions, privi-

leges, and grants. But simply owing to their numbers,

neither strategy can be applied to the hundreds of mil-

lions of ordinary Chinese, who are quite capable of col-

lective forms of dissent.

Suppression is always possible

and often used selectively against internal dissidents. But

like all overtly coercive tactics, overuse produces dimin-

ishing returns.

In the case of China, suppression risks

undermining the increasing openness that supports its

development agenda, as well as generating international

attention that may also have economic consequences. Thus

voice is the remaining option for controlling dissent and

maintaining order. The CCP has for some time pursued a

policy of channeling dissent onto a developing court sys-

tem,

as well as into low level elections.

But CCP ofﬁ-

cials are discovering, often through trial and error, that

regular and frequent deliberative meetings can reduce dis-

sent, social conﬂict and complaints, while saving money,

personnel, and time.

As Hirschman has noted, relative

to multiparty systems, one-party systems may even increase

voice incentives, since limited options for exit options are

more likely to increase internal pressures for voice. There

are “a great many ways in which customers, voters, and

party members can impress their unhappiness on a ﬁrm or

a party and make their managers highly uncomfortable;

only a few of these ways, and not necessarily the most

important ones, will result in a loss of sales or votes, rather

than in, say, a loss of sleep by the managers.”

Indeed,

just because the CCP cannot claim legitimacy based on

electoral victories, it must be attentive to other ways of

generating legitimacy.

Second, deliberative mechanisms can generate informa-

tion about society and policy, and thus help to avoid mis-

takes in governing. As noted, authoritarian regimes face a

dilemma with regard to information. Under conditions of

rapid development, authoritarian techniques are often at

odds with the information resources necessary to govern—

information about operational and administrative matters,

as well as the preferences of citizens and other actors.

Command-based techniques, however, limit communica-

tion and expression, while increasing the incentives for sub-

ordinates to husband and leverage information. Controlled

deliberation is one response to this dilemma. And as we have

been suggesting in China we in fact see an increasing num-

ber of policies subjected to deliberation within controlled

settings such as in the National and local Peoples’ Con-

gresses, within university centers, and within the Party

Schools. The CCP also commonly uses the mass media and

internet to test policy ideas or new policy by encouraging

debate and discussion on speciﬁc topics.

Third, deliberation can function to provide forums for

and exchanges with business in a marketizing economy. In

China, market-style economic development is dramati-

cally increasing the number and independence of business

stakeholders with veto powers not only over new invest-

ments, but also over tax payments, which can make up the

bulk of revenues for many locales.

Pressures for deliber-

ation can and do come from an increasingly strong busi-

ness sector. Consultations among public and private

interests are increasingly institutionalized

—a process rem-

iniscent, perhaps, of the early history of parliaments in

England and Europe in which the middle classes bar-

gained with monarchs for liberty and political voice in

exchange for their tax revenues.

Fourth, open deliberative processes can protect ofﬁcials

from charges of corruption by increasing credible trans-

parency. In a context in which local government revenues

increasingly depend upon business, almost all ofﬁcials are

regarded as corrupt, not only in public opinion but also

often by superiors. Ofﬁcials may learn to use transparent

and inclusive deliberative decision-making to avoid or

reduce accusations that their decisions have been bought

by developers and other business elites.

Fifth, in cases where decisions are difﬁcult and inﬂict

losses, deliberative processes enable leaders to deﬂect respon-

sibility onto processes and thus avoid blame. In China,

elites are recognizing that “I decide” implies “I take respon-

sibility.” But “we decide” implies that citizens are also

responsible, thus providing (legitimate) political cover for

ofﬁcials who have to make tough decisions. In Wenling

City, to take one example, it is now common for local

ofﬁcials to begin a decision-making processes by asking a

governmental organization to establish a deliberative meet-

ing or forum.

100

The government then passes the results

of the meeting to local legislative institutions, which then

replicate the results in legislation.

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Finally, to summarize the preceding points, delibera-

tive processes can generate legitimacy within a context in

which ideological sources are fading for the CCP, while

development-oriented policies create winners and losers.

Legitimacy is a political resource that even authoritarian

regimes must accumulate to reduce the costs of con-

ﬂict.

101

While we do not have broad-based evidence to

support the claim that deliberation is an important source

of legitimacy in China, there is some indicative evidence:

the results of annual deliberative polling suggest that delib-

erative polling has enhanced citizens’ trust in the local

government in Zeguo.

102

The Developmental Logic of

Authoritarian Deliberation I:

Deliberative Authoritarianism

Our argument is that the apparently puzzling combina-

tion of authoritarian rule and deliberative inﬂuence—

authoritarian deliberation—is conceptually possible,

empirically existent, and functionally motivated in the Chi-

nese case. But the concept also highlights two important

structural instabilities: deliberative inﬂuence tends to under-

mine the power of authoritarian command, and delibera-

tion is more effective as a legitimacy-generating resource

for elites when it ﬂows from democratic empowerments.

These instabilities are currently bridged in China through

internal differentiations among the scope, domain, and

levels of government authority, some limited democracy,

deliberative venues within authoritarian institutions, and

the authoritarian leadership of the CCP. The standard

expectation is that the CCP has developed a form of rule

that is relatively stable and highly resilient.

103

The insta-

bilities identiﬁed by the concept of authoritarian deliber-

ation are important, however, because they frame two

possibilities of normative interest from the perspective of

deliberative democratic theory that are consistent with

Chinese political development, though not exhaustive of

other possibilities. It is certainly possible, for example, for

China to evolve into a clientist- or crony-style capitalist

state based on the successive cooptation of stakeholders

into the governing structures of the CCP—a scenario that

would follow from the continuing transference of state

assets into private hands, combined with the CCP’s encour-

agement of wealthy stakeholders to join the party.

104

It is

also possible for the CCP to use more coercive powers to

maintain its rule in spite of costs performance and legiti-

macy: the habits and resources for command authoritari-

anism are deeply entrenched in China. The government

does not hesitate to use these resources if it sees the stakes

as high enough—as evidenced by the centralization sur-

veillance in the period leading up to the 2008 Beijing

Olympics, as well as more recent attempts to suppress

dissent by Uighur minorities.

Here, however, we style two possibilities, which we call

simply, deliberative authoritarianism and deliberation-led

democratization. These two possibilities focus on strat-

egies of political conﬂict management and decision-

making rather than patterns of economic ownership and

inﬂuence or coercive state power. In the short term we

expect deliberative authoritarianism to prevail, though we

believe deliberation-led democratization is a longer-term

possibility.

The ﬁrst possibility, deliberative authoritarianism,

implies that deliberative inﬂuence can stabilize authori-

tarian rule, which in turn is increasingly bounded in

such a way that it is compatible with processes that gen-

erate deliberative inﬂuence.

105

Under this scenario, author-

itarian political resources are used to mobilize deliberative

mechanisms. Deliberative inﬂuence is limited in scope

and agenda, and detached from political movements and

independent political organizations. Deliberative experi-

ments are localized and well-managed so as to prevent

them from expanding beyond particular policy areas, lev-

els of government, or regions. Following this logic, if

deliberation is successful at demobilizing and co-opting

opposition while generating administrative capacity, then

it will enable the CCP to avoid regime-level democrati-

zation. Under this scenario, authoritarian rule will con-

tinue to transform in ways that channel and manage the

political demands generated by economic development

in such a way that authoritarian rule is maintained and

strengthened. More speciﬁcally, we might expect the fol-

lowing, all of which can be observed in China today.

Coercion is targeted and limited. While state power is

still ubiquitous, the way in which the power is exercised is

modiﬁed in ways that both enable and require deliberative

approaches to political contestation. Under deliberative

authoritarianism, the use of coercion continues to be tamed

and regulated. Coercive force is carefully and selectively

used to eliminate organized political dissidents,

106

while

governance-related forms of conﬂict are channeled into

deliberative problem-solving venues.

Power is regularized through rights and deliberation.

The CCP continues to incrementally grant rights to citi-

zens including rights to own property, to consent to trans-

fers, and to consent to public projects with individual

impacts; rights to elect local committees and ofﬁcials, and

to manage local funds; and certain welfare rights. Limited

rights of private association are institutionalized. Impor-

tantly, China is likely to continue to incrementally but

systematically establish a judicial system that institution-

alizes the rule of law, enabling these rights to have auton-

omous effects.

107

The CCP gives up some power as a political investment

its future. The CCP calculates that giving over some

powers to local and administrative processes will generate

speciﬁc policy- or problem-related solutions to problems,

thus forming a piecemeal but resilient basis for its

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continued legitimacy—a process Pierre Rosanvallon has

called “destructive legitimation” that can be more gener-

ally observed in the governance strategies of complex

societies.

108

These local and segmented sites of legiti-

macy shore up the global legitimacy of the party in the

face of weaknesses of the ofﬁcial ideology, which in turn

increases its political capacities.

Under this scenario, then, the functional effectiveness of

authoritarian deliberation substitutes for regime-level

democratization. The current nascent form of deliberative

authoritarianism in China would evolve into a more con-

sistent and developed type of rule, under which cruder exer-

cises of power are replaced with more limited, subtle, and

effective forms. Political legitimacy would be generated by

deliberative means, locale by locale, and policy by policy.

The CCP continues to encourage local ofﬁcials to develop

participatory and deliberative institutions to curb rampant

corruption, reduce coercion, and promote reason-based per-

suasion. It invites ordinary citizens, experts, and think tanks

to participate in decision-making processes. But ultimate

control over agendas as well as outcomes remains with the

Party and beyond the reach of democratic processes. Of

course, this kind of softening, regularizing, and civilizing

of power remains contingent on the wisdom of the CCP

elites and local leaders, who must be sufﬁciently enlight-

ened as to be motivated by the legitimating effects of delib-

eration. Where these conditions hold, however, it is

theoretically possible for deliberative political processes to

become an important ingredient in the reproduction and

resilience of authoritarian rule—a possibility that remains

under-explored in the literatures on regime transitions as

well as the literature of deliberative democracy.

The Developmental Logic of

Authoritarian Deliberation II:

Deliberation-led Democratization

Democratic transitions from England in the eighteenth

and nineteenth centuries to Spain in the 1970s have mostly

been society-led, often conjoined with market-driven devel-

opment. These transitions were “liberal” in the sense that

autonomous social forces propelled democratization. The

democratic transitions of the late 1970s and 1980s tended

to be driven by regime-level changes from authoritarian to

multi-party electoral rule, and accompanied by constitu-

tional changes that institutionalized legislative power and

judicial independence, as well as the rights that secured

social freedom and autonomy. The Polish Solidarity model

of democratic transition, for instance, involved a strong

opposition from civil society that forced government to

the negotiating table.

Most students of China focus on democratization

through regime change from one-party rule to multi-

party electoral democracy. Reforms below the regime

level—at the local level, in administrative and policy pro-

cesses, and in the judiciary—are unlikely to lead to broader

democratization of the political system.

109

Yet an increas-

ing number of Chinese intellectuals see the development

of deliberative processes within authoritarian institutions

as a pathway to democracy. Some hold that democratiza-

tion could develop from within one-party rule, if the kinds,

level, and density of reforms alter its character in ways

that produce the functional effects of democracy.

110

If this

trajectory were to materialize, it would be unique: we know

of no examples of regime democratization as a conse-

quence of progressively institutionalized deliberation. Nor,

indeed, is such a possibility conceptualized in the transi-

tions literature.

But we can theorize the possibility. If authoritarian elites

increasingly depend upon deliberation as a source of legit-

imacy for their decisions, then it is also possible for the

democratic empowerments to grow incrementally, driven

in part by the fact that deliberation provides legitimacy

only if has the space and inclusiveness to generate inﬂu-

ence.

111

This kind of development would have the effect

of layering new institutions over old ones for the purpose

of enhancing their effectiveness, while also transforming

their character in democratic directions.

112

Deliberation

might then serve as a leading edge of democratization,

possibly through the following mechanisms.

Deliberative legitimacy tends toward inclusion of all

affected. When other sources of legitimacy fail—ideology,

traditional deference, or economic beneﬁts—deliberation

provides a means of generating legitimacy. However, delib-

eration generates legitimacy that is “usable” by the state

primarily when those whose cooperation the state requires

have been included in the deliberations, either directly or

through credible representation mechanisms, and partici-

pants believe they have had inﬂuence or accept the legit-

imacy of the process. Because the tactics of obstruction

(both rights-based and protest-based) and exit are widely

available in China, elites have incentives to expand insti-

tutions to include those affected by policies. For example,

local ofﬁcials in Wenling required each household to send

one family member to attend public hearings about land

appropriation or house demolition. When this tactic failed

to include all they believed to be affected, they resorted to

random selection methods to ensure wide representation.

113

Experiences of consultative and deliberative engagement

change citizen expectations. Closely related, democratic

institutions are easier for regimes to initiate than to

retract.

114

Once voice and rights are granted by the state,

they become part of the culture of expectations, trans-

forming supplicants into citizens, and making it difﬁcult

for regimes to dial back democratic reforms.

115

The party

secretary of Wenling City, for example, reported that he

regularly receives complaints from peasants when local

ofﬁcials make decisions without ﬁrst holding deliberative

meetings. Ofﬁcials in Zeguo, a township in Wenling,

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Vol. 9/No. 2 283

continue to repeat deliberative polling in part because

they worry that not to do so would violate expectations

created by earlier experiments. The anecdotal evidence is

backed by poll results which suggest that citizens of Zeguo

expect their government to conduct annual deliberative

polls on the budget, and trust them to do so. The mean

response to the question “Will the government take delib-

erative polling seriously”, ona0to10scale, where one is

“unlikely” and 10 is “the most likely” was 7.55 in the

2005 survey, but increased to 8.43 in the 2006 survey.

With regard to the question “Do you think the govern-

ment will use the results of the Deliberative Democracy

meeting”, the mean score increased from 7.33 in 2005 to

8.16 in 2006.

116

Zegui ofﬁcials are now working on a

regularized annual procedure for budgeting through delib-

erative polls.

Deliberation tends towards institutionalized decision-

making procedures. When deliberation is regularized, it

tends toward institutionalization. Institutionalization can

be driven by citizen expectations. But it can also be driven

by elite desires to retain control of political demand by

channeling into scope- and domain-speciﬁc venues. This

kind of tendency is visible in the government’s concern

with creating a non-arbitrary, constitutionally-regulated

judicial system, the existence of which is a condition of

democratization.

117

China seems to be changing, gradu-

ally, from an instrumental “rule by law” to a normative

“rule of law” which binds not only citizens but also gov-

ernment ofﬁcials.

118

The institutionalization of decision-

making procedures is also visible more directly; in 2004,

for example, the government of Fujian Province issued

requirements that each village hold at least four public

meetings a year and detailed procedures for selecting

participants and conducting the meetings, the role of chair-

person, note-taking, and linking meetings with village

decision-making processes.

119

As early as 2002, Wenling

City ruled that townships must hold four democratic

roundtables each year. In 2004, the city further speciﬁed

the procedures of these meetings, with the apparent aim

of deepening their democratic credentials.

120

In July 2008

the State Council issued a national regulation requiring all

county and city level governments to hold open public

hearings when making major social policies. Importantly,

the regulation speciﬁed procedures, apparently intending

to secure legal, “scientiﬁc,” and democratic legitimacy for

the hearings. In 2010 the State Council drafted three

National Guidelines regulating public participation. One

provision requires parties to present the supporting argu-

ment ﬁrst, followed by all opposing arguments. Another

procedure focuses on encouraging and managing open

debates in public hearings. Interestingly, such provisions

reﬂect and institutionalize the principles of deliberative

democracy, emphasizing equality, fairness, and openness

to public participation.

121

The logic of deliberative inclusion leads to voting. Polit-

ical elites in China often emphasize the relationship between

deliberation and consensual decision-making, consistent

with authoritarian deliberation. However, when interests

conﬂict even after deliberation, elites may ﬁnd that if they

nonetheless claim, counterfactually, that their preferred

decisions are the result of “consensus,” they erode the legit-

imacy of their decisions. It is increasingly common for

ofﬁcials to respond to contentious deliberation by holding

votes in public meetings, by submitting decisions to the

community through referendums, or by deferring to vot-

ing by the deputies of local people’s congresses. More gen-

erally, the notion that deliberation and voting should

function together within political processes is now more

common in China; of the 27 projects awarded national

prizes for local political innovations with deliberative ele-

ments between 2000 and 2005, ten involved various kinds

of elections.

122

While all of these processes can be described as CCP

strategies to co-opt opposition and expand state capaci-

ties, each can also result in lasting democratic transforma-

tions in the form of rule. As Tilly notes, “trajectories of

regimes within a two-dimensional space deﬁned by degree

of governmental capacity and extent of protected consul-

tation signiﬁcantly affect both their prospects for democ-

racy and the character of their democracy if it arrives.”

123

Conclusion

Our argument should not be taken as a prediction that

should China democratize, it will be governance-driven

and deliberation-led. Instead, our argument is both more

modest and speculative. By conceptualizing authoritarian

deliberation and exemplifying its existence in China, we

are identifying a trajectory of democratization that is con-

ceptually possible and normatively signiﬁcant. While our

theoretical speculations do align with observed develop-

ments in China, our aims are primarily theoretical. The

key distinction—between democratic empowerments and

deliberative inﬂuence—allows us to frame democratizing

tendencies as the legitimacy-producing capacities of delib-

eration. In so doing, we are pushing the democratic imag-

ination beyond familiar democratic institutions and toward

the transformative practices out of which democratic inno-

vations arise. It is in non-ideal cases such as China that

democratization is likely to give the biggest payoff in human

well-being—which is why normative democratic theory

must be able to meet them halfway. Last but not least, we

hope to expand the domain of comparative political theory

by setting western concepts into conversation with non-

western concepts and contexts.

124

Notes

1 Rodan and Jayasuriya 2007, Diamond 2002,

Ghandi 2008.

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284 Perspectives on Politics

2 He 2006a;, Mohanty et al. 2007; Nathan 2003;

Ogden 2002.

3 Leib and He 2006; Lin 2003; He 2006a, 2006b;

Ogden 2002.

4 Dallmayr 2004.

5 Habermas 1987, 1996.

6 Karl 1995, 72–86; Diamond 2002, 21–35; Collier

and Levitsky 1997, 441, Levitsky and Way 2002.

7 Zakaria 2003.

8 Nathan 2003, 6–7.

9 Levitsky and Way 2002, Diamond 2002; see also

Ghandi 2008.

10 Tsang 2009.

11 Cai 2008.

12 Geddes 1999.

13 Nathan 2003.

14 Rodan and Jayasuriya 2007; Cain, Dalton, and

Scarrow 2003; Fung 2006; Warren 2009.

15 See also Frug 1990; Bellone and Goerl 1992.

16 Bohman 1998; Chambers 2003; Cohen 1996; Elster

1998; Gutmann and Thompson 1996; Habermas

1996; Sunstein 2002; Warren 2002, 2006; Young

2000.

17 Dryzek 2009; Richardson 2003; Warren 2009.

18 Cf. Leib and He 2006.

19 Weber 1978, 946.

20 Parsons 1971, 14.

21 Habermas 1996; see also Habermas 1987, Rawls

1993.

22 Young 2000, Dryzek 2010.

23 Dahl 1998.

24 Habermas 1996, Goodin 2008.

25 Thompson 2008, 502–5, and Cohen 1996.

26 Goodin 2008, 108.

27 Urbinati 2006.

28 Schmitt, 1988; Manin 2002; Elster 1998; Steiner

et al. 2004.

29 See Dryzek et al. 2003.

30 Rodan and Jayasuriya 2007.

31 Harding 1987; Hough 1997, 142–43; Unger 1981,

117.

32 Tsang 2009, Nathan 2003.

33 He 2010c.

34 O’Brien and Li 2006.

35 See also Rodan and Jayasuriya 2007.

36 Cai 2008.

37 Pei 2006.

38 Nathan 2003; Ogden 2002; He 2007, ch. 13.

39 Fung 2006; Warren 2009.

40 Lin 2003.

41 Rosenberg 2006.

42 Bell and Chaibong 2003, He 2010a.

43 Chen 2006.

44 Ogden 2002, ch. 2; Chan 2007.

45 Heilmann 2008,10.

46 Shi 1997, He 2007.

47 Yang 2004.

48 Zhou 2007.

49 Study Times 2005.

50 People’s Daily 2006.

51 Tan 2006.

52 He and Thøgersen 2010.

53 O’Brien and Li 2006.

54 He 2007.

55 Cf. Tsai 2007, ch. 7.

56 He 2007, 96–7.

57 Ibid.; Diamond and Myers 2004; Mohanty et al.

2007.

58 Mo and Chen 2005; Wenling Department of Propa-

ganda 2003, 98.

59 Fishkin 1995.

60 Fishkin et al., 2006, 2010.

61 Yang 2004; Ogden 2002, 220–28.

62 He, personal observations in Hangzhou and Shang-

hai in 2003 and 2005.

63 Zhu 2004, 2.

64 Peng, Xue, and Kan 2004, 49.

65 Hangzhou Municipal Ofﬁce of Legislative Affairs

2007a.

66 Wang 2003.

67 Chen and He 2006, 445.

68 Hangzhou Municipal Ofﬁce of Legislative Affairs

2007b.

69 Unger and Chan 2004.

70 He 2006a.

71 Tsang 2009.

72 Nathan 2003.

73 McDonald 2007; cf. Gilley 2004.

74 Hough 1997, 142–143.

75 Skilling and Grifﬁths 1971.

76 Hough 1976, 6–7.

77 Hough 1997, 143.

78 Rodan and Jayasuriya 2007.

79 Ibid.

80 Fishkin et al., 2010.

81 Nanz and Steffek 2005; Steiner et al., 2004.

82 He 2008, 2010b; Fishkin et al., 2010.

83 Fishkin et al. 2010.

84 Ogden 2002, ch. 2; Bell and Chaibong 2003.

85 Chan 2007.

86 Cai 2008; Nathan 2003; Gilley 2004; Ogden 2002,

Tsai 2007, chap. 8.

87 Dryzek 2006; Buchanan and Keohane, 2006; Lin-

klater, 1998.

88 O’Brien and Li 2006.

89 Cai 2008.

90 Cai 2008, 431.

91 Ogden 2002, chap. 6, Tsai 2007.

92 Zhejiang Province 2005.

93 Hirschman 1970, 73–4.

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94 Cai 2008, 412–13.

95 Heilmann 2008.

96 Dickson 2003; Gilley 2004.

97 Nathan 2003.

98 Bates 1991.

99 He 2006a.

100 Leib and He, 2006.

101 Hess 2009.

102 He 2008, ch. 13.

103 Nathan 2003; Cai 2008; Tsang 2009.

104 Oi 1991; Ogden 2002, ch. 8.

105 See Tucher 2008.

106 Cai 2008.

107 Peerenboom 2002; Zhao 2003; Pan 2003, Cai

2008.

108 Rosanvallon 2008, 264.

109 For such a debate see He 2006b.

110 He 2008.

111 Dryzek 2009.

112 see Ogden 2002, 257; Thelen 2003.

113 He and Thøgersen 2010.

114 Przeworski et al., 2000, ch. 4.

115 Kelly 2006; see also O’Donnell, Schmitter, and

Whitehead 1986.

116 He 2008, 157.

117 Ogden 2002, ch. 6.

118 Peerenboom 2002; Liu 1998; O’Brien and Li

2006, Potter 1994.

119 Sanduao.com 2006.

120 He, interview in 2005.

121 He was invited to comment these three draft docu-

ments in Feb 2010 in Beijing.

122 China Innovation 2006.

123 Tilly 2004, 7.

124 Dallmayr 2004; Rosenberg 2006; He 2006b.

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Towards collaborative planning: deliberative knowledge utilisation and conflict resolution in urban regeneration in South China

Article

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References

Chapter

May 2024

Chih-yu Shih

Pluralizing climate change adaptation: mapping discourses in Vietnam

Article

Jun 2024

Wendy Conway-Lamb

Consultative Democracy

Chapter

Jan 2024

Rongxin Li

The examination of consultative democracy in China has experienced a discernible decline since the convening of the 18th National Congress of the CCP in 2012. This attenuation is evident in the convergence of the official discourse and academic perspectives, wherein the term “Xieshang Minzhu” has been embraced as a conceptual instrument accentuating the significance of soliciting public input, fostering consensus, and ultimately achieving a “consensus democracy.”

A Definition of Democracy

Chapter

Jan 2024

Rongxin Li

Concepts are initially instantiated through language, a proposition substantiated by the definitions provided by McKenna and Robinson (Journal of Reading 34:184–186, 1990), and Orwell (George. Politics and the English Language, Vol. 2. Renard Press Ltd, 2021) of their discourses on the interplay between politics and the English language. The linguistic portrayal of “democracy” as “the power of the people” primarily elucidates its very literal sense, encapsulating its descriptive meaning while neglecting the normative or prescriptive connotations associated with “democracy.”

Spatial and Temporal Patterns of Government – Citizen Interaction Online. Examining the Social Media Pages of the Russian Regional Authorities

Chapter

May 2024

Communities built on political trust: Theory and evidence from China

Article

May 2024

This study offers a unique mixed-methods investigation on the formation of neighbourhood communities in China’s megacities. We find that the local government helps homeowners overcome prevalent collective action problems and govern themselves more effectively. Neighbourhoods that have established homeowners’ associations (HOAs) enjoy better governing outcomes than those without HOAs, as evidenced by homeowners wielding greater control over neighbourhood affairs, showing heightened respect for democratic principles, and maintaining a stronger sense of community identity. Owing to these positive outcomes, and as compared to their counterparts in neighbourhoods without HOAs, homeowner activists in neighbourhoods with HOAs develop a deeper trust in their local government. As such, our argument that urban communities are based on political trust in authoritarian regimes complicates the conventional view that such regimes either repress civic engagement or manipulate civic organisations for social control.

Deliberative mini-publics as a Confucian institution

Article

Apr 2024

Zhichao Tong

This article constructs a positive case for deliberative mini-publics (DMPs) from the perspective of contemporary Confucian political philosophy. Extant empirical and normative studies of DMPs have treated them primarily as a concrete way to instantiate the deliberative conception of legitimacy advocated by Western political philosophers such as John Rawls and Jurgen Habermas. Almost no attention has been paid to how certain non-Western philosophies like Confucianism could provide different understandings of such an institutional innovation. The article fills this gap by exploring why DMPs should be incorporated into the two ideal types of regimes considered by today’s Confucian political philosophers, Confucian democracy and Confucian political meritocracy. In this regard, it makes an original contribution to both the field of democratic theory and the emerging paradigm of Confucian public administration.

Mapping networks of critical policy studies

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Apr 2024

Piyapong Boossabong

Redistributive policy and redistribution preferences: the effects of the Moscow redevelopment program

Article

Feb 2024

Participatory and deliberative institutions in China

Chapter

Full-text available

Oct 2006

Baogang He

This book investigates whether the theory of deliberative democracy - developed in the West to focus democratic theory on the legitimation that deliberation can afford - has any application to Chinese processes of democratization. It discovers pockets of theory useful to guide Chinese practices, and also Chinese practice that can educate the West.

Rural democracy in China: The role of village elections

Book

Full-text available

Jan 2007

Baogang He

This book examines village democracy and the prospects of China’s democratization. It explains how three key factors - township, economy and kinship - shape village democracy and account for rural variations. It considers the extension of village to township elections, the idea of a mixed regime and its impact on political development in China.

Democratic Autonomy: Public Reasoning about the Ends of PolicyP

Book

Oct 2023

Henry S Richardson

What would our decision-making procedures look like if they were actually guided by the much-discussed concept of “deliberative democracy”? What does rule by the people for the people entail? And how can a modern government’s reliance on administrative agencies be reconciled with this populist ideal? What form must democratic reasoning take in the modern administrative state? Democratic Autonomy squarely faces these challenges to the deliberative democratic ideal. It identifies processes of reasoning that avert bureaucratic domination and bring diverse people into political agreement. To bridge our differences intelligently, Richardson argues, we cannot rely on instrumentalist approaches to policy reasoning, such as cost-benefit analysis. Instead, citizens must arrive at reasonable compromises through fair, truth-oriented processes of deliberation. Using examples from programs as diverse as disability benefits and environmental regulation, he shows how the administrative policy-making necessary to carrying out most legislation can be part of our deciding what to do. Opposing both those liberal theorists who have attacked the populist ideal and those neo-republican theorists who have given up on it, Richardson builds an account of popular rule that is sensitive to the challenges to public deliberation that arise from relying on liberal constitutional guarantees, representative institutions, majority rule, and administrative rulemaking. Written in a nontechnical style and engaged with practical issues of everyday politics, this highly original and rigorous restatement of what democracy entails is essential reading for political theorists, philosophers, public choice theorists, constitutional and administrative lawyers, and policy analysts.

Representative Democracy: Principles and Genealogy

Book

Jan 2006

Nadia Urbinati

Remaking the Chinese Leviathan: Market Transition and the Politics of Governance in China

Book

Jul 2004

Dali L. Yang

Procedure and Substance in Deliberative Democracy

Chapter

Aug 2021

JOSHUA COHEN

Red Capitalists in China: The Party, Private Entrepreneurs, and Prospects for Political Change

Book

Jan 2003

Bruce J. Dickson

It has become a truism that continued economic reform in China will contribute to political change. Policy makers as well as many scholars expect that formation of a private sector will lead, directly or indirectly through the emergence of a civil society, to political change and ultimately democratization. The rapidly growing numbers of private entrepreneurs, the formation of business associations, and the cooperative relationships between entrepreneurs and local officials are seen as initial indicators of a transition from China's still nominally communist political system. This book, first published in 2003, focuses on two related issues: whether the Chinese Communist Party is willing and able to adapt to the economic environment its reforms are bringing about, and whether China's 'red capitalists', private entrepreneurs who also belong to the communist party, are likely to be agents of political change.

China's Long March toward Rule of Law

Book

Sep 2002

Randall Peerenboom

China has enjoyed considerable economic growth in recent years in spite of an immature, albeit rapidly developing, legal system, a system whose nature, evolution and path of development have been poorly understood by scholars. Drawing on his legal and business experience in China as well as his academic background in the field, Peerenboom provides a detailed analysis of China's legal reforms. He argues that China is in transition from rule by law to a version of rule of law, though most likely not a liberal democratic version as found in economically advanced countries in the West. Maintaining that law plays a key role in China's economic growth, Peerenboom assesses reform proposals and makes his own recommendations. In addition to students and scholars of Chinese law, political science, sociology and economics, this will interest business professionals, policy advisors, and governmental and non-governmental agencies as well as comparative legal scholars and philosophers.

Green States and Social Movements: Environmentalism in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and Norway

Book

Feb 2003

Social movements take shape in relation to the kind of state they face, while, over time, states are transformed by the movements they both incorporate and resist. Social movements are central to democracy and democratization. This book examines the interaction between states and environmentalism, emblematic of contemporary social movements. The analysis covers the entire sweep of the modern environmental era that begins in the 1970s, emphasizing the comparative history of four countries: the US, UK, Germany, and Norway, each of which captures a particular kind of interest representation. Interest groups, parties, mass mobilizations, protest businesses, and oppositional public spheres vary in their weight and significance across the four countries. The book explains why the US was an environmental pioneer around 1970, why it was then eclipsed by Norway, why Germany now shows the way, and why the UK has been a laggard throughout. Ecological modernization and the growing salience of environmental risks mean that environmental conservation can now emerge as a basic priority of government, growing out of entrenched economic and legitimation imperatives. The end in view is a green state, on a par with earlier transformations that produced first the liberal capitalist state and then the welfare state. Any such transformation can be envisaged only to the extent environmentalism maintains its focus as a critical social movement that confronts as well as engages the state. © J. S. Dryzek, D. Downes, H. K. Hernes, C. Hunold, and D. Schlosberg 2003. All rights reserved.

Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy

Book

Jan 1996

Jürgen Habermas

Authoritarian Deliberation: The Deliberative Turn in Chinese Political Development

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