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Abstract
Over the last 20 years, an increasing number of villagers have experienced free and fair elections, and this has contributed to the legitimacy of local democratic practices as well as the authoritarian regime. Yet, these improvements in election procedures can only occur when township officials are removed from the village leader selection process. As a result, the increase in regime legitimacy is closely tied to reduction in the authority of mid-level officials to directly select subordinates. This process, where it has occurred, has generated a bottom-up institutionalization of democratic practices, and suggests that researchers should not dismiss the importance of election procedures too quickly.
Notes
**John James Kennedy is assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Kansas. He has published articles in Asian Survey, China Quarterly, the Journal of Chinese Political Science, and Political Studies
1. Kevin J. O'Brien and Rongbin Han, ‘Path to democracy? Assessing village elections in China’, Journal of Contemporary China 18(60), (June 2009).
2. This is similar to Melanie Manion's ‘pocket of institutional change’ within a single party system. See Melanie Manion, ‘How to assess village elections in China’, Journal of Contemporary China 18(60), (June 2009).
3. Gunther Schubert, ‘One-party rule and the question of legitimacy in contemporary China: preliminary thoughts on setting up a new research agenda’, Journal of Contemporary China 17(54), (February 2008), pp. 191–204; also see Gunther Schubert, ‘Studying “democratic” governance in contemporary China: looking at the village is not enough’, Journal of Contemporary China 18(60), (June 2009).
4. ‘Jiang Zemin delivers report to the 16th CPC National Congress’, available at: http://www.chinese-embassy.no/eng/dtxw/t110238.htm (accessed 2 April 2008).
5. Jean C. Oi, ‘Economic development, stability and democratic village self-governance’, in Maurice Brosseau et al., eds, China Review 1996 (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1996), pp. 125–144.
6. Lianjiang Li, ‘Political trust in rural China’, Modern China 30(2), (April 2004), pp. 228–258; Tony Saich, ‘Citizens’ perceptions of governance in rural and urban China', Journal of Chinese Political Science 12(1), (Spring 2007), pp. 1–28.
7. Jie Chen, ‘Popular support for village self-government in China’, Asian Survey 45(6), (November/December 2005), pp. 865–885.
8. Ethan Michelson, ‘Justice from above or justice from below? Popular strategies for resolving grievances in rural China’, China Quarterly 193, (March 2008), pp. 43–64.
9. Jamie P. Horsley, ‘Village elections: training ground for democracy’, The China Business Review, (March–April 2001); Xu Wang, Mutual Empowerment of State and Peasantry: Village Self-Government in Rural China (New York: Nova Science Publishers, 2003), pp. 119–124; Baogang He, Rural Democracy in China: The Role of Village Elections (New York, NY: Palgrave, 2007).
10. Adam Przeworski, Democracy and the Market: Political and Economic Reforms in Eastern Europe and Latin America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 14.
11. Lianjiang Li, ‘Political trust in rural China’, p. 238.
12. Kevin J. O'Brien, ‘Villagers, elections, and citizenship in contemporary China’, Modern China 27(4), (October 2001), pp. 407–435.
13. Björn Alpermann shows that a number of provincial level implementation regulations for the 1998 Organic Law focus on public accounting and transparency in village financial matters. See Björn Alpermann, ‘Institutionalizing village governance in China’, Journal of Contemporary China 18(60), (June 2009).
14. Loren Brandt and Matthew A. Turner, ‘The usefulness of imperfect elections: the case of village elections in rural China’, Economic and Politics 19(3), (November 2007), pp. 453–479.