6. The Durability of Autocracy

Author(s):  
Andrea Kendall-Taylor ◽  
Natasha Lindstaedt ◽  
Erica Frantz

Authoritarian constituents and their role in stability 102 Authoritarian survival strategies 107 Other sources of authoritarian durability 114 Conclusion 120 Key Questions 121 Further Reading 121 Many authoritarian regimes in power today have been around for decades. The People’s Action Party, for example, has controlled Singapore since its independence in 1965. The Chinese Communist Party has been in power for even longer, approaching nearly seven decades of rule. And the monarchy in Oman has governed for more than two hundred years. Of course, not all authoritarian regimes have this staying power. Cambodia’s Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge ruled for only four years. Similarly, the Turkish military’s reign in the 1980s lasted just three years. This variation in longevity raises the question: what makes some authoritarian regimes more durable than others?...

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-40
Author(s):  
Ling Li ◽  
Wenzhang Zhou

By focusing on the underlit corners of authoritarian governance in China, this article challenges the thesis that constitutions matter to authoritarian regimes because they provide solutions for problems of governance. We argue to the contrary: the constitution appeals to the Chinese Communist Party (the Party or the ccp) because it does not provide solutions to fundamental issues of governance. Instead, such issues are kept out of the constitution so that they can be addressed by the Party through other regulatory mechanisms outside of the constitutional realm. In support of our thesis, we provide a unique review of the most up-to-date authoritative research on three key constitutional issues: central-local relations, party-state relations and power relations in the Politburo. These three issues correspond to three distinctive fields in China studies that were treated only in isolation but here we consider them together under the single framework of authoritarian constitutional governance.


Asian Survey ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 325-347 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Gorman

This article explores the relationship between netizens and the Chinese Communist Party by investigating examples of “flesh searches” targeting corrupt officials. Case studies link the initiative of netizens and the reaction of the Chinese state to the pattern of management of social space in contemporary China.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wei Huang ◽  
Panpan Yao ◽  
Fan Li ◽  
Xiaowei Liao

AbstractThis paper documents the structure and operations of student governments in contemporary Chinese higher education and their effect on college students’ political trust and party membership. We first investigate the structure and power distribution within student governments in Chinese universities, specifically focusing on the autonomy of student governments and the degree to which they represent students. Second, using a large sample of college students, we examine how participating in student government affects their political trust and party membership. Our results show that student government in Chinese higher education possesses a complex, hierarchical matrix structure with two main parallel systems—the student union and the Chinese Communist Party system. We found that power distribution within student governments is rather uneven, and student organisations that are affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party have an unequal share of power. In addition, we found that students’ cadre experience is highly appreciated in student cadre elections, and being a student cadre significantly affects their political trust and party membership during college.


1984 ◽  
Vol 97 ◽  
pp. 24-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham Young

The legacies of the Cultural Revolution have been nowhere more enduring than in the Chinese Communist Party organization. Since late 1967, when the process of rebuilding the shattered Party began, strengthening Party leadership has been a principal theme of Chinese politics; that theme has become even more pronounced in recent years. It is now claimed that earlier efforts achieved nothing, and that during the whole “decade of turmoil” until 1976, disarray in the Party persisted and political authority declined still further. Recent programmes of Party reform, therefore, still seek to overcome the malign effects of the Cultural Revolution in order to achieve the complementary objectives of reviving abandoned Party “traditions” and refashioning the Party according to the new political direction demanded by its present leaders.


1955 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 592-605 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allen S. Whiting

A Major obstacle to analysis of Communist movements is the, absence of firsthand evidence on attitudes and motivations affecting tension and cohesion. The refusal of four thousand members of the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese Communist Youth Corps to return to the mainland after the Korean War offered an unusually large and representative cross-section of these two organizations for systematic interrogation. The results of such an interrogation conducted by the author in April 1954, while in no way conclusive, provide suggestive statistical and analytical information concerning the composition and motivations of the post-Yenan Chinese Communist.According to official Communist figures, the Chinese Communist Party numbered approximately three million in December 1948 and more than five million in June 1950. This increase of two million members in eighteen months represents the most rapid expansion of Party rolls in the history of the Chinese Communist movement. It occurred after victory was in sight, but before rigorous measures to consolidate control erupted in the “Three Anti” and “Five Anti” movements of 1951. Those who joined the Party during this period form a group strikingly different from the elite of the Chinese Communist movement, which is composed of devoted revolutionaries trained in the rigorous experiences of the Long March and the wartime days of Yenan.


1977 ◽  
Vol 71 ◽  
pp. 528-554 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Lieberthal

Mao Tse-tung died on 9 September 1976. On 6 October, with the arrest of four leading members of the Politburo, Hua Kuo-feng became Mao Tse-tung's successor. Since then the Chinese media have vilified the “gang of four” as “splittists” who had worked together for years to divide the Party and promote their own personal fortunes. According to the victors, policy issues had little to do with the activities of this nefarious “gang.” Rather, lust for personal power and desire for wealth alone inspired them to wage partisan warfare within the ranks of the Chinese Communist Party.


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