Authoritarian Deliberation
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Deliberation with Chinese Characteristics
Woo investigates examples of the Chinese government using methods normally associated with deliberative democracy to involve their citizenry in decision-making at a sub-national level. Despite the tightening of civil society under Xi there are still some opportunities for the Chinese people to articulate their opinions and participate in decision-making. The proliferation of deliberative democratic practices is motivated by the Communist Party of China's (CCP) strong governance logic, to strengthen regime legitimacy and stability. Woo examines deliberative participation through the lens of participatory budgeting in China, and investigates its impact on local governance. To make sense of this model of deliberative democratic governance in China, she unpacks the relationship between deliberative democracy and governance. This requires delving into the forms and functions of deliberation with Chinese characteristics, especially to show how they depart from the Western deliberative democratic experiences. What is the Chinese deliberative discourse in relation to the Western conception of deliberative democracy? How can the Chinese deliberative experience contribute to the concept of deliberative governance? How does deliberation impact upon local governance in China? An intriguing read both for scholars of Chinese politics and for political scientists looking at comparative examples of deliberative governance.
Reinforcing Authoritarianism Through Democracy
This book provides empirical evidence to show how democratic experiments are harnessed to achieve control and support authoritarianism, through the lens of participatory pricing, which is one of the most important forms of deliberative democracy in China. The crucial point is an interlacement of easily perceptible improvement in empowerment (voluntary enrollment, disclosure of information and opportunities for expression during events) and hidden control (delicately designed procedures and pre-existing frameworks that influence participants in how they think, and when they talk). The mixture of these two mechanisms assures participants and educates them, producing cooperative citizens desired by the government. This is referred to as the partial empowerment strategy, which challenges the traditional assumption of the correlation between deliberation and empowerment. When authoritarian control influences deliberations in a form that obstructs the natural developmental process of empowerment, it acts as a filter that encourages only some form of empowerment, but precludes those that are too risky for the government. This exertion of dominance through a participatory form reflects the development of governance capability of China as a modern authoritarian state and explains its “surprising” resilience.
Consultative Democracy or Consultative Authoritarianism?
This book theorizes Chinese politics, specifically about China’s “deliberative democracy (xieshang minzhu 协商民主)”. Creating a China-West comparative framework, the author interrogates China's government's claims to give representation to citizens, allowing readers to see how all of these concepts interact within Chinese ideology, democratic discourse, and governance, and their relationship with Chinese authoritarianism. Above all, this book represents a sustained hybridization of political theory, one which is neither a simple democratic-authoritarian dichotomy, nor a reinterpretation of the official propaganda. This study will interest scholars of Chinese politics and statecraft, shedding light on an emergent discourse of the state – Chinese xieshang minzhu. More importantly, this book goes beyond a simple rhetorical and linguistic use of ‘deliberative democracy’ in the Western sense, and rather emphasizes the very consultative nature of Chinese politics, which facilitates and reconsolidates Chinese authoritarianism.