We the People’s Republic
We the People’s Republic
China’s DemocraticVillage Elections
theLegitimacy of the One-Party State
Jace T. White
------
Rollins College
Spring 2013
Table of Contents
- Introduction…………………………………………..2
- The Analytical Context
Of Democracy in China………………………….....7
- The Dynamics of
Village Self-Government……..………………...... 10
- Elections andLocal Governance……...... 11
- Elections and Rural Villagers……………………….. 19
- Village Elections
Political Legitimacy………..……….……...... 24
- Conclusion…………………………………………..... 28
- Bibliography…………………………………………... #
Abstract:The implementation of democratic elections in villages across China has been one of the most widely discussed topics of the reform era. In particular, analysis has attempted to determine the potential significance and consequences of village elections for the much broader issues of political reform in China. Analyzing the issue at the local level, this paper contends that the institutionalization of village elections and certain elements of electoral democracy in village governance allow opportunities for the party-state to reconsolidate its rural political legitimacy. This paper will provide evidence to its main contention by drawing evidence from scholarly review, village-level case studies, and analysis of the implications of village electionsfor the rural political legitimacy of the party-state vis-à-vis the structures and dynamics of local-level governance and the rural voting populace.
I. Introduction
Revolutionary change in China has always, by and large, been a product of the rural countryside. In the decades following 1949, the will of the rural Chinese people was to lead the People’s Republic of China into a new age of revolutionary Maoist communism. Nearly sixty-four years later, the rural Chinese people are supposedly the vanguard of no less revolutionary a movement designed to bring China into modernity—democracy. Whether China is able to realize the “fifth modernization” is an issue of considerable contention, but recent developments in villageself-government (CunminZizhi村民自治) provide a different light in which to analyze future political reform in China.
Pro-market reforms and the gradual liberalization of the Chinese economy under the guidance of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the Post-Mao era has resulted in phenomenal developmental growth and rising standards of living, bringing China ever closer to international standards of modernity. China’s future success is unsurprisingly directly dependent on the economic system’s sustainability. However, economic development as it currently stands has not been without its demerits. Rampant systemic corruption, widening wealth inequality, increasingly common social unrest, and decreasing economic growth rates threaten the sustainability of economic development and therefore China’s modernization.
The successful resolution of these issues and sustainability of economic growth hinges largely on the capacity of the Chinese political system to undergo reforms that would enable it to cope with the developmental issues of a continuously changing economic system. The central Chinese leadership has fully understood the necessity of political reform, especially from the onset of the post-Mao era reforms. Deng Xiaoping, the author of the phenomenal and sweeping economic reforms of the past four decades, realized that the successful progression of economic reform and development would greatly depend on concurrent political reform. Deng was especially vocal in his support for the so-called dual track of development, notably claiming:“If we fail to do that [political reform], we shall be unable to preserve the gains we have made in the economic reform… Without political reform, economic reform cannot succeed… So in the final analysis, the success of all our other reforms depends on the success of the political reform.”[1] Most analysts, therefore, agree that China’s future modernization depends almost entirely on significant reform of the Chinese political system, yet the predicted ramifications vary significantly.
Political reformas it currently stands, while not completely static, has lagged far behind economic reforms and by most accounts is far from achieving democratization. There have been important steps, although slow-paced and incremental, towards political reform. China’s traditional authoritarian political system has evolved, for example, in terms of its developing norms of meritocratic leadership promotion and norms of stable leadership succession. Yet perhaps the most important and notable institutional development is the implementation of democratic elections for membership in rural village committees (Cunminweiyuanhui村民委员会), a village-level executive and administrative body equivalent to that of city councilsin Western societies. Analysts frequently point to village elections and village self-government[2] as providing the foundation for eventual full-fledged political reform.
China’s experiment with democratic village elections began in 1987 in direct response to the process of the de-collectivizing the people’s communes a few years prior in 1982. As part of Deng’s economic reforms, dismantling the basic administrative level of the Chinese communist system allowed forthe “Household Responsibility” system of land privatization to take effect. While de-collectivization resulted inrising standards of living and greater economic opportunities for rural Chinese, the process thoroughly shook up local governance structures. The village-level political organizational units of the commune, namely the production brigades (danwei单位), were disbanded along with the commune.The dissolution of these basic rural political organizations resulted in a political vacuum among the rural villages, causing concern for the party-state[3] due to it’s substantially decreased presence in the countryside. Furthermore, the lowest rung of government bureaucracy shifted up to the township level (Xiangzhen乡镇) of governance, leaving villages not only economically but also, to an extent,politically autonomous. Interestingly, some villages elected their own leaders to an executive organizational body, a village committee,without the government’s express permission and through democratic means. This drew the attention and, interestingly, later approval of the Chinese central leadershipinterested in reasserting party-state control in the countryside, providing for effective governance in the villages, and protecting against the possibilities of rural economic and political instability.[4]The central Leadership’s response of support for village elections and democratic village self-governance reflected the oft-invoked policy-making method of “proceeding from point to surface” (youdiandaomian由点到面), or decentralized, locally-based experimental policy-making; democratic village electionsand village self-governance were thus sanctioned as experimental local solutions to the breakdown of rural governance and a strategy to shore up the party-state’s local political authority and legitimacy.[5]
As a result, the Ministry of Civil Affairs enacted the Organic Law of Village Committees in 1987, requiring each of China’s nearly 930,000 villages to elect members of a village committeethrough democratic means.[6] The village committee, consisting of five to seven elected members, would act as the village’s executive administrative bodyand oversee local administrative affairs. The Organic Law further mandated that village committees be elected in three-year cycles. After the trial implementation beginning in 1987, the Organic Law was adopted into full law in 1998, signaling a permanent institutionalization of village-level electoral law in China.[7]
Unsurprisingly, this development has drawn considerable scholarly attention, and debate carries on regarding the implications of village elections and village self-government for China’s future political reform. The presence of democratic elections at the lowest level of Chinese society may appear to be a political breakthrough in one of the most notoriously authoritarian states, but the realities are much more nuanced. In many ways, the village has become a testing ground for whether or not democracy can work in China and the experimentation with democratic elections in China’s villages continuesinto the 21st century without offering a decisive answer.In addition, great variancesin regional experiences with village self-government further cloud the picture; one village’s experiences with elections may be starkly different from others’ and therefore no decisive consensus exists on the decisive implications of village elections for political reform. However, numerous case studies of village elections from across China serve to highlight the overarching trends in possible implications for future political reform from which conclusions can be drawn.
The purpose of this paper will be to explore the consequences of village elections in context of the much broader issue of future political reform in China. Specifically, this paper will analyzethe potential implications of village electionsfor the political legitimacy of the current party-state regime’s rural presence, authority, and leadership. Along these lines, this paper asserts that village elections, in institutionalizingelectoral democracyas a basis of legitimate grassroots-level governance, also cogently signify the capacity of village elections to contribute to the reconsolidation and strengthening of the authoritarian, one-party state’s political legitimacythroughout rural China.The implications of village elections and village self-government, analyzed in context of both local dynamics and structures of local governance as well as rural Chinese villagers particularly evidences the capacity of village elections to reinforce the party-state’s internal and external legitimacy.
Going forward, this paper will begin with an examination of the appropriate criteria with which to define the concept of democracy, especially as it pertains to village elections and China’s current political circumstances. Subsequently, the paper will provide an ampleselection of the current body of scholarly literatureconcerning village elections and political reform in China, in many cases including scholarly case studies of several issues pertinent to village elections as well. For lack of official and reliable national data or surveys of village elections, analysis as a result must rely for the most part on scholarly case studies of village elections conducted across China.These case studies provide a comprehensive overview of the key trends and themes of village self-government and elections across the vast breadth of the largely anecdotal“mountain of evidence” from which arguably any conclusion concerning village elections can be haphazardly drawn.[8]
With this in mind, this paper will avoid the use of anecdotal evidence to draw conclusions and avoid getting bogged down in finite details of specific incidences of village self-government and village elections. The rationale behind the analysis of case studies is to reveal how a village’s specific electoral experiments may be significant of the much broader underlying themes and trends existing in rural Chinese villages and how these may signify similar trends in Chinese politics at large. That is to say, this paper will not determine the significance of village elections for China’s political system by pointing to specifics, as one village’s experiences most decidedly do not represent the whole of China in the slightest; this paper will not, for instance, point to the specific failure of elections in Village A to oust a corrupt cadre or the specific dynamic of Village B’s village committee-party relationship to conclude the future of political reform in China. Rather, as village elections are still a relatively newpolitical development across China, this paper will relate the experiences of specific villages carefully researched in case studies as evidence of potential trends in the broader context of political reform in China as a whole.
In order to determine the potential implications of village elections for the party-state’s rural legitimacy, this paper will examine the effects of institutionalizedvillage electoral democracy for the structures and dynamics of local governance and the political role and involvement of rural villagers. In particular, this paper’s conclusions will focus its analysis onthe potential consequences of village elections for both the external and internal legitimacy of the party-state.That is, analysis of the structures and dynamics of local governance will demonstrate the capacity of village elections to aid in the re-legitimation of the party-state’s own internal structures of governance. Similarly, the analysis of village elections as they impact rural villagers will highlight the potential of village elections to re-legitimate its external relations with the villagers themselves.
II. The Analytical Context ofDemocracy in China
Any discussion of political reform in China must also provide a sufficient analytical context of the theory of democracy. Including a working definition of the components of democracy allows for the appropriate analysis of the democraticnature of village elections as well as the analysis of their potential democratizing power. Yet certain questions remain: what is democracy and how do we judge a political system to be democratic? Is it appropriate to hold developing political systems to Western standards of democracy? Although this paper will primarily examine how village elections provide for the reconsolidation of the party-state’s legitimacy, analysis of the democratic village self-government operating in China offers a more complete picture of the nature of democratic village elections and democratic village self-government. Therefore, this section will expound on certain criteria through which to define democracy in China.
In order to synthesize this functioning definition of democracy, this paper will draw on select scholarly interpretations. For one, Larry Diamond’s account of electoral democracy is, in his words, “a civilian, constitutional system in which the legislative and chief executive offices are filled through regular, competitive, multiparty elections with universal suffrage.” Furthermore, Diamond asserts that elections themselves must be free and fair to be considered democratic in their own right orconducive to democratic governance. Firstly, elections must be free in the sense that legal barriers to entry and participation in the election are minimal, that competition and partisanship are both permitted and protected, and that voters must be free from coercive or fraudulent electoral processes. Secondly, elections must befairin the sense that they are equitable, transparent, and impartial, free of control by the vested interests present in the ruling party, and accessible by all adult citizensgranted the right to vote in universal suffrage.[9]
The appropriate context in which to examineChina’s potential paths of political reform is thus reliant on a practical selection of criteria for what shall constitute democracy. It would be counterintuitive to select these criteria according tolofty Western standards, as the West’s political development experience, political culture, and historical-political context all differ greatly from those of China. In analyzing democratic characteristics through a developmental perspective, the definition of democracy operates more so along a continuum rather than on an either/or basis.[10] That is, because it would be inappropriate to judge the nascent inklings of democracy in China according to the standards of the more advanced and institutionalized liberal democracies of Western states, the developing notions of democracy in China must begin at the basic level on this continuum. For example, the staple characteristics of liberal democracies, such as multiple political parties, systems of government checks-and-balances, and most cogently the direct election of national legislative and executive offices do not appropriately reflect criteria of a developing democratic system, but criteria of advanced, institutionalized democratic societies.
And so, accounting for China’s status as a developing nation, the criteria of democracy—pertaining to village elections and their broaderimplications for political reform—will borrow fromDiamond’srudimentary interpretation of electoral democracy. As a result, democracy for the purposes of this paper will be defined with the following fivebasic yet significantcriteria:
1)The enfranchised citizenry determine chief legislative and executive offices through free and fair direct elections
2)Electoral procedures are governed bythe rule of law.
3)The political system must allow and respect pluralism, namely dissent of opinion and organization of opposition
4)Universal suffrage is extended to the adult citizenry as an inalienable constitutional and legal right.
5)Norms and/or institutions of accountability, responsiveness, competencein governance exist that reinforce the connection between government and voters,allowing the interests of the voting citizenry potential indirect influence over the policy-making process, to a degree.
These five criteria allow for the appropriate and realistic judgment of whether or not China’s experiment with village self-governmentrepresentsdevelopments in democracy. However, despite frequent claims on part of central leaders that the foundations of the Chinese political system lie with “socialist democracy” or the equally enigmatic “democracy with Chinese characteristics,”the obvious conclusionbased on the aforementioned criteria isthat although certain elements of democracy may be developingin China, Chinese democracy as it currently standsremains far removed frommeaningful notions of democracy in the macro perspective. The political system’s democratic shortcomings are notablyevident, for instance, in the lack of elections for centralexecutive and legislativeleadership, the frequency with which rule by law constitutesthe guiding legal system, andthe outright prohibition of oppositionparties or organizations, just to name a few. However, whereas democracy is obviously non-existent at the national perspective, at the local perspective village self-government has made some arguably significant strides towards realizing a combination of the above criteria.
As the purpose of this paper is to determine whether the institutions and norms of village electoral democracy will benefit or detract from the party-state regime’srural legitimacy, the above criteria are critical to contextually defining democracy in China.Going forward, the use of the term democracyin this paper will reflect the above criteria. Similarly, the term democratization will refer to the spread of these criteria to other sectors of governance (e.g. the ‘bottom-up’ spread of democratic institutions and norms to higher government strata) or, similarly, will refer to the increasingdevelopment of these criteria within certain levels of governance.
III. TheDynamics of Village Self-Government
This paper draws on a broad review of the current body of scholarly literature regarding village elections. The available body of literature provides an exhaustive overview on the potential capacity for village elections to lead to lasting and significant political reforms. Being such a controversial topic, the future political reform has unsurprisingly drawn considerable debate and various predictions of its nature. In focusing this paper’s topic onvillage elections and village self-government,this paper will refer to the portion of the central scholarly debate concerned primarily with the significance of village elections for both the future of the party-state’s political legitimacy in rural China. Within this section of the available literature, this paper will specifically review scholarly research of village-level governance structures, developing electoral procedures, the wide array of predictions for future political reform, and the dynamics of the political involvement of rural villagers and the particulars of villager involvement in local-level governance and politics.