Part I. The Macro Perspective: 1. A theory of single-party dominance and opposition party development 2. Dominant party advantages and opposition party failure, 1930s-90s Part II. The Micro Perspective: 3. Why participate? A theory of elite activism in dominant party systems 4. The empirical dynamics of elite activism Part III. Implications: 5. Constrained to the core: opposition party organizations, 1980s-90s 6. Dominance defeated: voting behavior in the 2000 elections 7. Extending the argument: Italy, Japan, Malaysia, and Taiwan.

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Why Dominant Parties Lose: Mexico's Democratization in Comparative Perspective

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.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID2030018_code912111.pdf?abstractid=2030018&mirid=5

Authoritarian Deliberation: The Deliberative Turn in Chinese Political Development

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.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S1537592711000892

China's Communist Party: Atrophy and Adaptation, by David Shambaugh. Washington: Woodrow Wilson Center Press; Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. xvi + 234 pp. US$39.95/£23.95 (hardcover). At a recent conference, a Sunday-morning panel met to discuss the current state of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The conclusion was that either the CCP was in its death throes or it had adapted to changing conditions and retained a substantial degree of power. The tension generated by these seemingly irreconcilable conclusions drives veteran China- watcher David Shambaugh's most recent book, China 's Communist Party: Atrophy and Adaptation. The book's organization is straightforward. The first third looks at scholarly assessments of the CCP in light of domestic events in China (particularly during 1989) and international events (specifically - but not limited to - the breakdown of Communism in Europe from 1989 to 1991). The second part of the book discusses the lessons learned by analyzing the elite intellectual party discourse about these events and the many prescriptions to allow the CCP to avoid the same fate. The final section looks at the two most important Party systems Propaganda and Organization - to illustrate how these lessons have shaped the CCP's tenure from 1990 to about 2005. Shambaugh's conclusion is that the CCP is simultaneously atrophying and adapting to changing circumstances but that, for the moment at least, adaptation is getting the upper hand. The scope of Shambaugh's description of the CCP at the national level is impressively expansive. He deftly maps out the contemporary Party apparatus in Beijing. Among many other things, Shambaugh traces the ways in which Hu Jintao has been able to manipulate what Jiang Zemin had carved out as his particular legacy - the "Three Represents" - to serve Hu' s own agenda. He also makes a strong case that CCP intellectuals' critiques of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and early 1990s were simultaneously - and subversively - criticism of China, and nicely reproduces the fearful lens through which China's leaders watched as the rest of the socialist world withered away before their eyes. Of course, in any work of scholarship on a subject as complex as the CCP, there will inevitably be some shortcomings. Perhaps it is unfair to criticize a book aimed as much at the policy community as at the academy, but there is a striking paucity of theory. Shambaugh does not establish a causal relationship between the fall of the Soviet bloc, lessons learned, and the subsequent CCP recasting of itself. Nor does he conceptualize the CCP's learning process in response to these external events. Rather, we are given a set of events, a series of scholarly debates and internal policy recommendations, and a discussion of adaptation undertaken by the Party. There is no causal argument; nor is there much of a discussion at all about how these national-level decisions were implemented or absorbed by the CCP apparatus writ large. …

China's Communist Party: Atrophy and Adaptation

The research on government performance measurement has been largely descriptive and prescriptive, with only limited attention paid to hypothesis testing and middle-range theory construction. Although researchers have made prescriptions about how to make performance management work, the validity of those prescriptions has not been systematically examined. In particular, the role of the external political environment and stakeholder participation, two important factors for public sector management, remains unclear. Based on survey data, this article uses structural equation modeling to test a model that assesses how political environment, stakeholder participation, organizational support, and training affect the adoption and managerial effectiveness of performance management.

Managerial Effectiveness of Government Performance Measurement: Testing a Middle-Range Model

This major history of Hong Kong tells the remarkable story of how a cluster of remote fishing villages grew into an icon of capitalism. The story began in 1842 with the founding of the Crown Colony after the First Anglo-Chinese war - the original 'Opium War'. As premier power in Europe and an expansionist empire, Britain first created in Hong Kong a major naval station and the principal base to open the Celestial Chinese Empire to trade. Working in parallel with the locals, the British built it up to become a focus for investment in the region and an international centre with global shipping, banking and financial interests. Yet by far the most momentous change in the history of this prosperous, capitalist colony was its return in 1997 to 'Mother China', the most powerful Communist state in the world.

A Modern History of Hong Kong

This paper puts forward the concept of consultative Leninism to describe the political system that has taken shape in China after the death of Deng Xiaoping. It argues that the Communist Party has made its essentially Leninist political machinery more resilient in confronting the huge social and political challenges that the current global financial crisis may unleash in China by incorporating consultative elements. Consultative Leninism has five defining characteristics: an obsessive focus upon staying in power; continuous governance reform designed to pre-empt public demands for democratization; sustained efforts to enhance the Party's capacity to elicit, respond to and direct changing public opinion; pragmatism in economic and financial management; and the promotion of nationalism in place of Communism.

Consultative Leninism: China's new political framework

Democracy Shelved: Great Britain, China, and Attempts at Constitutional Reform in Hong Kong, 1945-1952

Hong Kong is at the heart of modern China's position as a regional - and potential world - superpower. In this important and original history of the region, Steve Tsang argues that its current prosperity is a direct by-product of the British administrators who ran the place as a colony before the handover in 1997.The British administration of Hong Kong uniquely derived its practices from the best traditions of Imperial Chinese government and its philosophical, Confucian basis. It stressed efficiency, honesty, fairness, benevolent paternalism and individual freedom. The result was a hugely successful colony, especially in industry and finance, and it remains so today with its new status of Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China.Under British imperial administration, Hong Kong grew from a collection of fishing villages to an international entrepot, an industrial power and an international financial centre. British and Chinese interests dovetailed and the Chinese population was satisfied by the welfare reform and economic advancement perpetuated by Britain's administrative officers. Demand for constitutional reform and a sense of Hong Kong Chinese identity grew only as the handover to China approached.This definitive history of the colourful individuals who administered the colony on behalf of the British government sheds light on two empires inextricably linked in nature and on the philosophy of government.

Governing Hong Kong: Administrative Officers from the Nineteenth Century to the Handover to China, 1862-1997

(1997). Strategy for survival: The cold war and Hong Kong's policy towards Kuomintang and Chinese communist activities in the 1950s. The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History: Vol. 25, No. 2, pp. 294-317.

Steve Tsang

Papers

A Modern History of Hong Kong

Consultative Leninism: China's new political framework

Democracy Shelved: Great Britain, China, and Attempts at Constitutional Reform in Hong Kong, 1945-1952

Governing Hong Kong: Administrative Officers from the Nineteenth Century to the Handover to China, 1862-1997

Strategy for survival: The cold war and Hong Kong's policy towards Kuomintang and Chinese communist activities in the 1950s