The Communist Party of Cuba and Present Challenges: Reflections on the Eighth Party Congress

The Eighth Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba—held from April 16 to 19, 2021—offers salient questions, issues, and other themes of the current reality of Cuba from the view of revolutionary militants. Let us take heed.

Analysing intra-party power: Swedish selection committees over five decades

Unlike political parties in many other countries, Swedish ones have not adopted more inclusive methods for choosing their election candidates and party leaders. While the party congress formally selects important party offices, the process is managed, prior to the formal vote, by a selection committee vested with the task of filtering the pool of potential leaders and proposing one of them as the new leader. In this article, we survey the composition of these selection committees over time to investigate the extent to which change has taken place. Specifically, we investigate whether the composition of these powerful committees, which decide who joins the ranks of the country’s political leaders, has developed over time in relation to what prominent theories of intra-party power might lead us to expect. We derive testable expectations from prominent conceptualisations of intra-party power and apply these empirically. Specifically, we study the composition of party selection committees in Sweden over 50 years, 1969–2019. In total, this includes 40 different selection committees and almost 400 individuals. Contrary to conventional wisdom on intra-party power relations, the empirical analysis reveals a surprising degree of stability, raising questions about common claims of general power shifts within parties.

Tackling inequality in China will be slow and complex

Significance The latter was declared complete in time for the Party's centenary this year, in line with political requirements. Whether 'common prosperity' represents a genuine shift or largely continues poverty alleviation under a different name is not yet clear. Impacts Evidence of a firmer commitment to addressing inequality may emerge at the Party Plenum later this year and the Party Congress next year. Urban-rural inequality remains high, making urbanisation and rural development directly relevant to common prosperity. Philanthropy may become more prominent, but there will not be more space for international NGOs.

Of Constitutions, Campaigns and Commissions: A Century of Democratic Centralism under the CCP

Democratic centralism, a hallmark of Leninist party organizations, has played a formative role in the history of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Yet despite being hailed as an “inviolable” and “unchanging” Party principle, understandings of democratic centralism have shifted dramatically over the century of its existence. This study traces the long arc of the concept's evolution across successive Party Constitutions, focusing on three critical historical junctures: the Sixth Party Congress, which formally adopted democratic centralism into its Constitution as an organizational principle; the Seventh Party Congress, which adopted rectification as the Party's practice of democratic centralism; and the 19th Party Congress, which set a new milestone in codifying the system as a disciplinary tool. I argue that while democratic centralism exemplifies the CCP's institutional plasticity and adaptive governance and is critical to understanding Party-driven constitutionalism in contemporary China, it also highlights an irresolvable paradox inherent in Party rule. Adaptability does not necessarily impart resilience. I conclude that the CCP's normatively unconstrained extra-constitutional leadership under Xi Jinping highlights the essentially and increasingly irrationalist aspects of its illiberal governance project.

Xi's common prosperity uses old methods on new targets

Significance The meeting ended with a call for high incomes to be regulated and for the rich to 'give back' more. It followed a series of dramatic regulatory actions against large private firms and super-rich individuals. Impacts Inequality has become a higher priority in recent years; many further attempts to address it will emerge. The Party has not soured on private business in general or in principle; most private firms and entrepreneurs will not be targets. Comparisons to Mao and the Cultural Revolution are misplaced. Next year's Party Congress is particularly sensitive, so the customary crackdowns ahead of it may be commensurately intense.