Journal ArticleDOI
Let Many Civil Societies Bloom: The Rise of Consultative Authoritarianism in China
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TLDR
In this article, the authors analyse civil society development in China using examples from Beijing to demonstrate the causal role of local officials' ideas about these groups during the last 20 years, and find growing convergence on a new model of state-society relationship that they call consultative authoritarianism, which encourages the simultaneous expansion of a fairly autonomous civil society and the development of more indirect tools of state control.Abstract:
In this article, I analyse civil society development in China using examples from Beijing to demonstrate the causal role of local officials' ideas about these groups during the last 20 years. I argue that the decentralization of public welfare and the linkage of promotion to the delivery of these goods supported the idea of local government–civil society collaboration. This idea was undermined by international examples of civil society opposing authoritarianism and the strength of the state-led development model after the 2008 economic crisis. I find growing convergence on a new model of state–society relationship that I call “consultative authoritarianism,” which encourages the simultaneous expansion of a fairly autonomous civil society and the development of more indirect tools of state control. This model challenges the conventional wisdom that an operationally autonomous civil society cannot exist inside authoritarian regimes and that the presence of civil society is an indicator of democratization.read more
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Journal Article
Governance in China
TL;DR: In this article, the authors propose a more comprehensive meaning of the term "good governance", which is defined as "the totality of processes and arrangements, both formal and informal, by which power and public authority are distributed and regulated".
Journal ArticleDOI
Consultative Authoritarianism and Its Limits
TL;DR: Consultative authoritarianism challenges existing conceptions of nondemocratic governance as discussed by the authors, and citizen participation channels are designed to improve policymaking and increase feelings of regime respon- t...
Book
Civil Society under Authoritarianism: The China Model
TL;DR: Li et al. as discussed by the authors argue that interactions between local officials and civil society facilitate a learning process, whereby each actor learns about the intentions and work processes of the other, and this duality motivates local officials in China to construct a'social management' system, known as consultative authoritarianism, to encourage the beneficial aspects and discourage the dangerous ones.
Book
Media Politics in China: Improvising Power under Authoritarianism
TL;DR: In this article, Repnikova reveals the webs of an uneasy partnership between critical journalists and the state in China, highlighting the distinctiveness of Chinese journalist-state relations, as well as the renewed pressures facing them in the Xi era.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
China rethinks unrest
TL;DR: In this article, internal data from China's own police indicate that protests are growing in number and increasing in size, and the struggle to control unrest will force Beijing's leaders and other countries to face riskier dilemmas than at any time since the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations.
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Book Review: Civil society and development: a critical exploration
TL;DR: The authors trace back such discourses to breaks and continuities with colonial discourse, where the old colonial language of "trusteeship" is back in vogue in a big way, and the discourse of failed states that is drawn upon in this book itself reworks some colonial narratives, whereby some places were seen as lacking the structure, presence and logics that the West claims originate there and therefore requiring Western intervention and action in order to ‘progress’.
Journal Article
Governance in China
TL;DR: In this article, the authors propose a more comprehensive meaning of the term "good governance", which is defined as "the totality of processes and arrangements, both formal and informal, by which power and public authority are distributed and regulated".
Journal ArticleDOI
The governance of NGOs in China since 1978: How much autonomy?
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the aims of official NGO policy and its influence on the growth patterns of NGOs and conclude that the interactive and mutually dependent relations between the government and NGOs indicate the continuing power of the party-state as well as the decline in its capacity to control the growth of organizations.
Journal ArticleDOI
Distributional Consequences of Reforming Local Public Finance in China
TL;DR: In this paper, the central-local budgetary arrangements have undergone numerous changes since the 1960s as the Chinese government in its quest for modernization has sought to balance the needs of central control and local autonomy.