Studying ‘Democratic’ Governance in Contemporary China: looking at the village is not enough

Abstract

Though it is important that future research on village elections focuses more systematically on the post-election period than on ongoing electoral institutionalization, it is not enough to look at the village level alone if one wants to assess the quality of village governance. What we need is a more comprehensive framework that includes an analysis of election procedures, cadre behaviour, villager awareness, and the larger cultural context, which would connect the village, township and county levels and shift attention toward legitimacy rather than ‘democracy’.

Notes

^*Gunter Schubert, Ph.D., is Chair Professor of Greater China Studies at the Department of Chinese and Korean Studies, Institute ofAsian and Oriental Studies,University of Tuebingen,Germany. His research focuses on political and social developments inGreaterChina, local governance reform in the PRC, cross-Strait relations and integration, Chinese and Taiwanese nationalism, and East Asian regionalism. He can be reached at [email protected]

^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 point is also highlighted by Melanie Manion, ‘How to assess village elections in China’, Journal of Contemporary China 18(60), (June 2009).

^3. A good example is the work of Qingshan Tan, e.g. Village Elections in China. Democratizing the Countryside (Lewiston et al., The Edwin Mellen Press, 2006). In his contribution to the debate on O'Brien and Han's paper in this journal, Tan underlines that ‘the top priority for rural governance is to build a democratic infrastructure, starting with electoral institutionalization’. Björn Alpermann has recently focused on electoral implementation at the provincial level and argues in his article in this issue that ‘the exercise of authority has a procedural dimension itself’ which must be closely watched. In that sense, both authors do, to some extent, disagree with O'Brien and Han's distinction between proceduralism and context. See Qingshan Tan, ‘Building democratic infrastructure: village electoral institutions’, Journal of Contemporary China 18(60), (June 2009). However, proceduralism can also be applied to post-election village governance. See Björn Alpermann, ‘Institutionalizing village governance in China’, Journal of Contemporary China 18(60), (June 2009).

^4. See, for example, the provocative essay by Carsten Holz, ‘Have China scholars all been bought?’, Far Eastern Economic Review, (April 2007), pp. 36–40.

^5. See, for example, Tong Zhihui, Xuanju shijian yu cunzhuang zhengzhi [Election Incidents and Village Politics] (Beijing: Zhongguo Shehui kexue, 2004); Lili Tsai, ‘Cadres, temple and lineage institutions, and governance in rural China’, China Journal 48, (2002), pp. 1–27; Stephan Feuchtwang, ‘Peasants, democracy and anthropology’, Critique of Anthropology 23(1), (2003), pp. 93–120; Susanne Brandtstädter and Gunter Schubert, ‘Democratic thought and practice in rural China’, Democratization 12(5), (2005), pp. 801–819.

^6. Su Fubing and Yang Dali, ‘Elections, governance, and accountability in rural China’, Asian Perspective 29(4), (2005), pp. 125–157. The authors point, for instance, to the significance of tax-for-fee reforms, innovative rules to enforce the transparency of village finance (cunwu gongkai), the installation of Village Representative Assemblies and new modes of increased public participation in the selection of village party secretaries.

^7. Gunter Schubert, ‘One-party rule and the question of legitimacy in contemporary China: preliminary thoughts of setting up a new research agenda’, Journal of Contemporary China 17(54), (February 2008), pp. 191–204. See also John James Kennedy, ‘Legitimacy with Chinese characteristics: “two increases, one reduction”’, Journal of Contemporary China 18(60), (June 2009).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gunter Schubert

8 *Gunter Schubert, Ph.D., is Chair Professor of Greater China Studies at the Department of Chinese and Korean Studies, Institute ofAsian and Oriental Studies,University of Tuebingen,Germany. His research focuses on political and social developments inGreaterChina, local governance reform in the PRC, cross-Strait relations and integration, Chinese and Taiwanese nationalism, and East Asian regionalism. He can be reached at [email protected]