A Zero-Sum Game? Repression and Protest in China

2017 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 309-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yao Li
Keyword(s):  
Original Data ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
The State ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
Quantitative Evidence ◽  
Authoritarian State ◽  
Zero Sum ◽  
Popular Contention

Most scholarship on contentious politics in authoritarian regimes focuses on severe repression and transgressive protest (e.g. revolt), suggesting a zero-sum game played by the state and challengers. However, a burgeoning literature suggests that less brutal forms of authoritarian states have emerged in recent decades and that protesters in these countries tend to limit their challenges, avoiding direct confrontation with the authorities. If so, can the notion of the zero-sum game truly capture the nuances and complexities of contentious politics in authoritarian regimes? Taking the case of China, this article offers a systematic analysis of the pattern of repression and protest in a strong authoritarian state. Drawing on an original data set of 1,418 protest events in China, this article shows that the Chinese state permits some (albeit limited) space for protest and that most protesters confine themselves to this space. These findings thus provide quantitative evidence that popular contention in China is featured by a non-zero-sum game. Overall, this study contributes to a more comprehensive and complex understanding of popular contention in authoritarian settings.

Designing Contentious Politics in Post-1989 China

Modern China ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (5) ◽  
pp. 459-493 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Lorentzen
Keyword(s):  
Central Government ◽  
Safety Valve ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
Information Gathering ◽  
The State ◽  
Vertical Flow ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Bargaining Position ◽  
Popular Contention ◽  
Flow Of Information

This article proposes a new approach to studying China’s contentious politics in the post-1989 era. This approach treats China’s central government as an institutional designer whose policies on social conflicts shape popular contention. This approach offers four insights. First, protests can provide useful information to the state about citizen grievances, but only if they are costly enough to ensure that only serious claimants engage in them. Second, protesters routinely forego strategies that would give them a stronger bargaining position because the state benefits from maintaining a consistent policy of rewarding only protests that pursue weaker strategies. Third, the contradictory “safety valve” and “single spark” metaphors for protest can be reconciled by distinguishing between the vertical flow of information from citizens to state and the horizontal flow of information from citizen to citizen. Finally, the article suggests why protests have been tolerated when apparently safer information-gathering institutions exist.

Contingent technocracy: bureaucratic independence in developing countries

2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 401-429 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manuel P. Teodoro ◽  
M. Anne Pitcher
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Policy Implementation ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Political Context ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Conventional Wisdom ◽  
The Political ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Established Democracies ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThis study investigates the effects of formal bureaucratic independence under varying democratic conditions. Conventional accounts predict that greater formal independence of technocratic agencies facilitates policy implementation, but those claims rest on observations of industrialised, high-income countries that are also established democracies. On the basis of research in developing countries, we argue that the effects of agency independence depend on the political context in which the agency operates. Our empirical subjects are privatisation agencies and their efforts to privatise state-owned enterprises in Africa. We predict that greater independence leads to more thorough privatisation under authoritarian regimes, but that the effect of independence declines as a country becomes more democratic. Using an original data set, we examine the relationship between formal agency independence and privatisation in Africa from 1990 to 2007. Our results modify the conventional wisdom on bureaucratic independence and culminate in a more nuanced theory of “contingent technocracy”.

scholarly journals State Networks and Intra-Ethnic Group Variation in the 2011 Syrian Uprising

2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (7) ◽  
pp. 995-1027
Author(s):  
Kevin Mazur
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Ethnic Group ◽  
Original Data ◽  
The State ◽  
Social Boundaries ◽  
Group Level ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Ethnic Exclusion ◽  
Group Variation

The 2011 Syrian uprising looks, from afar, like a paradigmatic example of ethnically exclusive rule giving way to civil war. The ruling regime is drawn almost exclusively from the Alawi minority, and the challengers were drawn heavily from the Sunni majority. But many Sunnis remained quiescent or actively supported the regime. This article argues that variation in revolutionary participation among members of an excluded ethnic group is best explained in terms of the networks states construct across ethnic boundaries. It identifies several forms of linkage that regimes can develop with their subject populations and relates them to variations in local social structure. Drawing on an original data set of ethnic identity and challenge events in the Syrian uprising, the article quantitatively tests the state networks hypothesis. Its findings suggest that the mechanisms commonly associated with ethnic identity and “ethnic exclusion” frequently operate upon social boundaries below the ethnic group level.

scholarly journals Loyalists, Localists, and Legibility: The Calibrated Control of Provincial Leadership Teams in China

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-234
Author(s):  
David J. Bulman ◽  
Kyle A. Jaros
Keyword(s):  
Local Knowledge ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Leadership Teams ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Standing Committee ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Local Leadership ◽  
Governance Challenges ◽  
Personnel Control

Selecting provincial leaders is a fraught task for authoritarian regimes. Although central authorities more readily trust provincial leaders with close ties to the center, such loyalists may lack the local knowledge and connections necessary to govern adeptly. Using an original data set on the tenures and backgrounds of China’s provincial party standing committee members, this article explores how Beijing fine-tunes provincial leadership teams to resolve this dilemma. The analysis challenges the conventional wisdom that Beijing exerts its tightest personnel control in strategically important provinces. It shows that Beijing tolerates significant embeddedness of local leadership in provinces with complex governance challenges even when these provinces are important. Moreover, it finds that when the center reasserts control through appointments of loyalist personnel during times of crisis, it does so in a balanced manner. These calibrated personnel strategies highlight the extent to which authoritarian systems rely on local expertise and experience as well as top-down control.

Empowering the Police: How the Chinese Communist Party Manages Its Coercive Leaders

2014 ◽  
Vol 219 ◽  
pp. 625-648 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuhua Wang
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
Public Security ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Reform Era ◽  
Regime Stability ◽  
The Chinese Communist Party

AbstractHow does the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) secure the loyalty of its coercive leaders, and its public security chiefs in particular, in the face of numerous domestic protests every year? This article presents the first quantitative analysis of contemporary China's coercive leaders using an original data set of provincial public security chiefs and public security funding during the reform era. I demonstrate that the CCP, owing to its concern for regime stability, has empowered the public security chiefs by incorporating them into the leadership team. Empowered public security chiefs then have stronger bargaining power over budgetary issues. I rely on fieldwork, qualitative interviews and an analysis of Party documents to complement my statistical analysis. The findings of this analysis shed light on the understanding of regime durability, contentious politics and the bureaucracy in China.

scholarly journals The Price of Collaboration: How Authoritarian States Retain Control

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (13) ◽  
pp. 2091-2117
Author(s):  
Barbara Maria Piotrowska
Keyword(s):  
Original Data ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Authoritarian State ◽  
State Security ◽  
East German ◽  
Independent Media ◽  
Foreign Media ◽  
The Cost

How does access to foreign or independent media affect the operation of a state security apparatus? This article answers this question concentrating on two characteristics of the informant network of the East German Stasi: the number of informants and their “price.” Exposure to West German TV (WGTV) had the potential to decrease the supply of informants and increase the demand for them, pushing up the value of the payments the informants received, but leaving their quantity theoretically ambiguous. I verify this reasoning using a rare original data set of Stasi informants. Results show that informants were given approximately 70 East German marks worth of rewards more per year in the areas that had access to WGTV, as compared with areas with no reception—ironically an amount roughly equivalent to the cost of an annual East German TV subscription. These findings demonstrate how an authoritarian state can counteract the potentially destabilizing effect of foreign media.

scholarly journals Lawyers in Authoritarian Regimes

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sida Liu ◽  
Gihad Nasr
Keyword(s):  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
The State ◽  
Legal Rights ◽  
Alexis De Tocqueville ◽  
Research Subjects ◽  
Sociology Of Professions ◽  
Authoritarian State ◽  
Social Science Study ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The 19Th Century

Lawyers arguably play critical roles in democracies—Alexis de Tocqueville already told us so after observing the American democracy in the 19th century. However, the legal profession’s social positions and political orientations in authoritarian regimes are ambiguous. Across the world, lawyers are frequently observed in the fight against arbitrary state power and for the basic legal rights of citizens and social groups. In the meantime, they are often regarded by the public as allies of elite politicians and ruling parties. The juxtaposition of those two contrasting images, as well as the limited access to research subjects, makes the social science study of lawyers in authoritarian regimes a challenging topic. This body of literature originated from the scholarly effort to “bring the state back in” to the Anglo-American sociology of professions, which had not taken politics seriously until the 1980s. From the 1990s on, political scientists, sociologists, historians, anthropologists, and legal scholars have examined a variety of authoritarian contexts in which lawyers interact with the state, civil society, religious and ethnic groups, and communities. This growing literature on lawyers in authoritarian regimes can be classified into five main clusters: (1) theoretical foundations; (2) historical studies; (3) lawyers and the authoritarian state; (4) lawyer mobilization and political change; and (5) judges and prosecutors.

Rotational Characteristics of the Green Solar Corona: 1947-1991

1994 ◽  
Vol 144 ◽  
pp. 139-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Rybák ◽  
V. Rušin ◽  
M. Rybanský
Keyword(s):  
Solar Corona ◽  
World Wide ◽  
Rotation Period ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Coronal Emission ◽  
Time Intervals ◽  
Data Set ◽  
The World ◽  
Coronal Emission Line ◽  
Homogeneous Data

AbstractFe XIV 530.3 nm coronal emission line observations have been used for the estimation of the green solar corona rotation. A homogeneous data set, created from measurements of the world-wide coronagraphic network, has been examined with a help of correlation analysis to reveal the averaged synodic rotation period as a function of latitude and time over the epoch from 1947 to 1991.The values of the synodic rotation period obtained for this epoch for the whole range of latitudes and a latitude band ±30° are 27.52±0.12 days and 26.95±0.21 days, resp. A differential rotation of green solar corona, with local period maxima around ±60° and minimum of the rotation period at the equator, was confirmed. No clear cyclic variation of the rotation has been found for examinated epoch but some monotonic trends for some time intervals are presented.A detailed investigation of the original data and their correlation functions has shown that an existence of sufficiently reliable tracers is not evident for the whole set of examinated data. This should be taken into account in future more precise estimations of the green corona rotation period.

Electing the Senate

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wendy J. Schiller ◽  
Charles Stewart III
Keyword(s):  
Original Data ◽  
State Legislators ◽  
Internal Conflict ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Senate Elections ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
The Public ◽  
Seventeenth Amendment ◽  
The People ◽  
Election Process

From 1789 to 1913, U.S. senators were not directly elected by the people—instead the Constitution mandated that they be chosen by state legislators. This radically changed in 1913, when the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, giving the public a direct vote. This book investigates the electoral connections among constituents, state legislators, political parties, and U.S. senators during the age of indirect elections. The book finds that even though parties controlled the partisan affiliation of the winning candidate for Senate, they had much less control over the universe of candidates who competed for votes in Senate elections and the parties did not always succeed in resolving internal conflict among their rank and file. Party politics, money, and personal ambition dominated the election process, in a system originally designed to insulate the Senate from public pressure. The book uses an original data set of all the roll call votes cast by state legislators for U.S. senators from 1871 to 1913 and all state legislators who served during this time. Newspaper and biographical accounts uncover vivid stories of the political maneuvering, corruption, and partisanship—played out by elite political actors, from elected officials, to party machine bosses, to wealthy business owners—that dominated the indirect Senate elections process. The book raises important questions about the effectiveness of Constitutional reforms, such as the Seventeenth Amendment, that promised to produce a more responsive and accountable government.

Engagement Through the Diaspora Channel

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael S. Danielson
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Statistical Models ◽  
State Level ◽  
The State ◽  
Multivariate Statistical ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Municipal Level

The first empirical task is to identify the characteristics of municipalities which US-based migrants have come together to support financially. Using a nationwide, municipal-level data set compiled by the author, the chapter estimates several multivariate statistical models to compare municipalities that did not benefit from the 3x1 Program for Migrants with those that did, and seeks to explain variation in the number and value of 3x1 projects. The analysis shows that migrants are more likely to contribute where migrant civil society has become more deeply institutionalized at the state level and in places with longer histories as migrant-sending places. Furthermore, the results suggest that political factors are at play, as projects have disproportionately benefited states and municipalities where the PAN had a stronger presence, with fewer occurring elsewhere.

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