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Democratic Localism: The Case of Grassroots Self-Governance in Urban China

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Abstract

One important way to understand political change in China is to examine how citizens participate in and interact with China’s grassroots system of governance. Urban grassroots self-governance is organized around the residents committees (RCs) of various urban neighborhoods. While earlier research tends to characterize the RC as an institution for government control and penetration of society, the active and largely voluntary participation found in this study challenges this state-dominant view. Based on survey data collected in six provinces in China, we discovered a wide range of participatory activities by residents in local self-governance processes. Institutions and activities of such “democratic localism” give rise to thick networks and interactions among fellow residents and between them and higher levels of governance. Our “Democratic Localism” framework urges researchers to resist focusing solely on the changes at the highest system-level (i.e., the eventual democratization of the Chinese state), but instead to pay more attention to politics and governance as played out in the local affairs of community residents. We find that satisfactory democratic governance relies heavily on inclusiveness and competition in the various institutional spheres, and participation in local politics casts heavy influence on citizens’ perception of national-level politics.

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Notes

  1. E.g., Huntington (1968).

  2. E.g., Nathan (2003).

  3. E.g. Putnam (1993), De Tocqueville (1956).

  4. E.g. Rose and Shin (2001); Fukuyama (2011).

  5. We thank one anynmous reviewer for pointing out this. For references, see, for example Lo (2013).

  6. We thank one anonymous reviewer for raising this point. For references, see, for example, Truex (2017).

  7. Cf. Pavlićević (2014).

  8. The Organic Law of the Urban Residents Committees of the People’s Republic of China (1989).

  9. E.g., Lo (2013), Wang et al. (2013).

  10. See for example, Wang and Sun (2017).

  11. The authors have these provincial regulations on file for reference.

  12. The situation in China’s cities seems much better than in rural China. A recent research project found that women villagers generally lack basic knowledge about candidates in village committee elections, which can be interpreted as a problem concerning the quality of citizens’ participation in rural governance. See: Wang and Dai (2013).

  13. Furthermore, in some cases, RRA may functionally fully substitute the RA, especially in the larger neighbourhoods where it is not practical for all residents or households to actively participate. Instead, residents may delegate a person for each entrance (danyuan) or building (lou) to represent them in RRA.

  14. HCs are self-management bodies of homeowners in newly developed residential areas (see Read 2008; Wang et al. 2013). Besides these decision-making/executive institutions, in a handful of cities, another institution, the work station, affects grass-roots governance. This is a neighborhood-level outpost of the street office, meant to fulfill the executive role (as opposed to the deliberative role of the RRA, and the legislative role of the RC). For details, see Bing (2012).

  15. This is strikingly different from the situation concerning female villagers found in Wang and Dai (2013).

  16. The Chinese phrase is beidongyuan, which can mean being mobilized, urged, or persuaded to do something.

  17. On how, in China’s reform history, the government/party has been the agent that purposely identifies and selects innovations or good practices and diffuses them to other places see Naughton (1996).

  18. On file with the authors.

  19. For details of sampling and other aspects of this dataset, please refer to Wang and Sun (2017). We are extremely grateful for Long Sun’ support in sharing this dataset for this section’s purpose.

  20. As noted previously, local enterprises, public institutions, social organizations, and various governmental units on different administrative levels also may appear as stakeholders in community governance.

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Acknowledgements

Financial support from the China Social Science Foundation (Grant no. 12AJL005) is gratefully acknowledged. Special thanks go to Xiao SUN and Meixi Zhuang for helpful comments.

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Author notes

  1. Zhengxu Wang and Jianxiong Liu are co-first authors.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of International Relations and Public Affairs (SIRPA), Fudan University, Shanghai, China

    Zhengxu Wang

  2. Institute of Economics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, China

    Jianxiong Liu

  3. Department of China Studies, Xi’an Jiaotong Liverpool University, Suzhou, China

    Dragan Pavlićević

Authors
  1. Zhengxu Wang
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  2. Jianxiong Liu
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  3. Dragan Pavlićević
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Correspondence to Dragan Pavlićević.

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Wang, Z., Liu, J. & Pavlićević, D. Democratic Localism: The Case of Grassroots Self-Governance in Urban China. Chin. Polit. Sci. Rev. 3, 129–153 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41111-018-0097-z

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