Cover Page The handle http://hdl.handle.net/1887/45827 holds various files of this Leiden University dissertation Author: Wang, Zhongyuan Title: Cards of a party regime : controlled election and mobilized representation in Chinese local congresses Issue Date: 2017-01-31
CARDS OF A PARTY REGIME Controlled Election and Mobilized Representation in Chinese Local Congresses (Taiwan Compared) WANG ZHONGYUAN
Front cover illustration: Deng Xiaoping loves playing Bridge. In the picture, he is playing the cards of democracy, election and representation, while holding high the card of with Chinese characteristics. Designed by Ma Jinhui Back cover illustration: China s President Xi Jinping is casting his vote in 2016 direct congressional election. Photo by Lan Hongguang, from the Xinhua News Agency Printed by Ridderprint Copyright Wang Zhongyuan, Leiden, the Netherlands. All rights reserved. No part of this dissertation may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means whatsoever without prior permission of the author.
CARDS OF A PARTY REGIME Controlled Election and Mobilized Representation in Chinese Local Congresses (Taiwan Compared) Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van Doctor aan de Universiteit Leiden, op gezag van Rector Magnificus prof. mr. C.J.J.M. Stolker, volgens besluit van het College voor Promoties te verdedigen op dinsdag 31 januari 2017 klokke 11:15 uur door Wang Zhongyuan geboren te Ningguo (Anhui), China in 1986
Promotors Prof. Dr. Frank N. Pieke Prof. Dr. Daniela Stockmann Promotiecommissie Prof. Dr. André Gerrits Prof. Dr. Patricia Thornton Prof. Dr. Petr Kopecký Prof. Dr. Thomas Heberer The research project for this dissertation has been financially supported by the Leiden University Full Doctoral Fellowship, the Erasmus Foundation, the Leiden University Fund (LUF), and the Leiden Institute for Area Studies (LIAS).
To my parents, Wang Weixi and Chen Shu and To the memory of my master s thesis supervisor, Deng Zhenglai (1956-2013)
Table of Contents List of Figures and Tables..xi List of Abbreviations...xii Acknowledgements.. xiii Chapter One: Introduction and Overview.....1 1. Research puzzle: a tale of two missions.1 2. The central research question and sub-questions......4 3. The arguments in brief......6 4. Relations to other bodies of work... 9 4.1 Autocratization by democratic institutions.10 4.2 A new approach to looking at Chinese local congress....19 5. Organization and chapter-by-chapter overview 25 Chapter Two: Research Design and Methodologies...29 1. Methodological approach...30 2. Casing: China as a case and cases in China..32 2.1 What kind of case is China?......33 2.2 Case selection within China...34 3. Analytic level of Chinese congress: why local? and how local?....38 4. Why compared with Taiwan?...39 5. Fieldwork and data sources.41 Chapter Three: Institutional Design and Development of Chinese Congress...49 1. The logic of China s congressional design: two layers of power entrustment 52 2. The spirit behind China s congressional design...53 2.1 The People's Democratic Dictatorship...53 2.2 Democratic Centralism...55 3. Ordering state power: people's congress in China's overall power structure......59 3.1 Relations among state organs: four types of elections for the state...59 3.2 The Party-congress relationship.66 4. The development of local people s congress 69 5. Conclusion.73 Chapter Four: Playing by the Rules: How China s Party Regime Manufactures Certainties in Direct Congressional Elections...75 1. Administrationalization of elections.77 1.1 The party committee leads... 77 1.2 The people s congress takes charge..82
1.3 All relevant sides support.....87 2. Operationalization of election control..88 2.1 Selecting voters 89 2.2 Selecting candidates.92 2.3 Creating advantages for party-backed candidates.... 98 2.4 Mobilizing selected voters to vote..103 3. Discussion... 112 3.1 The operationalization of socialist democracy in LPC direct elections. 112 3.2 The limits of electoral control 114 4. Conclusion.114 Chapter Five: From Co-optation to Exclusion: The Party Regime s Changing Strategies for Managing Independent Candidates in Direct Congressional Elections....117 1. Understanding independent candidate in China s context..120 1.1 The concept of independent candidate 120 1.2 Institutional opportunities. 121 1.3 The scale. 122 2. A tentative typology of independent candidates 124 2.1 Politically oriented activists 124 2.2 Interests-and-rights protectors.125 2.3 Seat-benefit seekers.126 3. Four waves of independent candidates participation 128 4. The party regime s changing strategies over independent candidates 138 4.1 Changed strategies..138 4.2 Exclusion tactics.140 5. Why exclusion?: some tentative explanations..145 6. Conclusion..149 Chapter Six: Representational Authoritarianism?: Mobilized Representation in Chinese Local Congresses......151 1. Traditional wisdom of representation theories and their problems...153 2. Congressional representation in Chinese context...155 3. Hybrid representation claims of Chinese congress...157 4. Transforming representation claims into action..160 4.1 The changes in the Deputy Law.160 4.2 Institution building for extra-session representation... 164 4.3 Working-method innovations for deputies extra-session representation activities.. 167 (1) Inviting voters in (qingjinlai, 请进来 )..169 (2) Reaching out to voters (zouchuqu, 走出去 ).171 (3) Processing voters needs and requests.174
4.4 Supervision, incentives, and investments for deputies extra-session representation activities...176 5. Why extra-session representation?: a game without losers 180 6. Conclusion: mobilized representation and output legitimacy.182 Chapter Seven: Conditions for Authoritarian Consolidation by Elections in Single-Party Regimes: Mainland China and Taiwan Compared... 185 1. Autocratization by elections vs. liberalization by elections.185 2. Accommodating elections in Taiwan.187 3. Motivations for introducing elections in Taiwan 191 4. Manipulating elections to consolidate power in Taiwan...194 5. The mechanisms of liberalization by elections in Taiwan..199 6. Conditions for the effects of elections on Leninist single-party regimes...202 6.1 Different local power structure and electoral players.202 6.2 Different electoral opportunity structure and opposition strategies 204 6.3 Different legitimacy structure and autocrats democracy promise.207 7. Conclusion..209 Chapter Eight: Conclusion and Looking Forward...213 1. Key findings 215 2. Contributions and limits..220 2.1 Implications for studies of Chinese politics 220 (1) Party-state-society relationship in China..220 (2) China s authoritarian resilience 221 2.2 Implications for studies of authoritarian politics 223 (1) Authoritarian rulers motivation and strategies 223 (2) Mechanisms: reflection on informational functions 224 (3) Conditions for single-party authoritarian consolidation..226 2.3 Implications for representative democracy.227 2.4 Limits: the problem of generalization. 228 3. New research agenda: toward a general theory of political representation 230 References and Fieldwork Documents....233 Appendix1: List of interviews. 253 Appendix 2: Glossary of terms related to China s congressional election and representation..257 Summary. 263 Samenvatting (Summary in Dutch). 265 Curriculum Vita.. 269
Illustrations FIGURES Figure 1.1: A logic map of this dissertation....7 Figure 2.1: Conditional causation from democratic institutions to authoritarian persistence...39 Figure 3.1: The electoral system in the People s Republic of China.. 61 Figure 3.2: The Communist Party s control over local people s congresses... 68 Figure 4.1: The party regime s monopoly over election management and mobilization system for LPC direct elections..... 81 Figure 4.2: The Party s control channels over electoral process and affairs at the county and township levels......85 Figure 4.3: Local authorities mobilize selected voters to vote for selected candidates in LPC elections......89 Figure 4.4: Three ups, three downs process for mulling over formal candidates. 94 Figure 4.5: The trinity of socialist democracy in Chinese elections...112 Figure 5.1: Independent candidates on Weibo in 2011-2012 elections. 136 Figure 5.2: The result of Weibo-based independent candidates participation in 2011-2012 elections.......138 Figure 6.1: The working-methods and incentives of deputies extra-session representation activities.......168 Figure 6.2: New mechanisms for processing voters needs and requests. 176 Figure 7.1: The KMT s share of seats in county/city councils..190 Figure 7.2: The KMT s share of seats in township councils.....193 Figure 7.3: Electoral clientelism networks in Taiwan..197 Figure 7.4: The mechanisms of liberalization by election in Taiwan.. 119 Figure 7.5: Coalition shift in Taiwan s electoral politics since the 1970s 203 TABLES Table 2.1: A typology for case selection.. 36 Table 3.1: The repercussions of the CCP s democracy ideology on people s congress...58 Table 3.2: Election time for people s congresses at various levels.....62 Table 3.3: Average percentage of CCP members in people s congresses at various levels...... 67 Table 3.4: Relevant laws on people s congresses in contemporary China...70 Table 3.5: The number, size, and representation ratio of people s congresses at the county and township levels... 71 xi
xii Figures and Tables Table 4.1: Rule changes in the Election Law for LPC elections at the township and county levels (1953-2015).... 85 Table 4.2: An example of a pre-election investigation form at P district in Shanghai. 92 Table 4.3: A statistics of votes through different means in 2006 and 2011 LPC elections at counties and townships in Chongqing Municipality.....105 Table 5.1: The number of write-in candidates who won LPC election. 122 Table 5.2: The number and regional distribution of Weibo-based independent candidates in the 2011 2012 congressional election.. 123 Table 5.3: A tentative typology of independent candidates in LPC elections. 124 Table 5.4: Chinese authorities changed strategies over independent candidates. 138 Table 6.1: Hybrid representation claims in Chinese People s Congress..157 Table 6.2: The changes in the Deputy Law since 1992....163 Table 7.1: Elections in Taiwan during the single-party authoritarian era. 189 List of Abbreviations CCP DLO DPP KMT LPC LSG NPC PPC PPCC PRC ROC Chinese Communist Party Deputy Liaison Office Democratic Progressive Party Kuomintang, Chinese Nationalist Party Local People s Congress Leading Small Group National People s Congress Provincial People s Congress People s Political Consultative Conference People s Republic of China Republic of China
Acknowledgement Deng Zhenglai, a famous Chinese scholar and supervisor of my master s thesis, constantly insisted that research should be closely attached to personal life. I was born and grew up in a rural village in Anhui Province, China. The village used to be very busy under a name of Little Shanghai during the Mao era because it was chosen by the state as one of the locations of Third Front industrial projects for the production of arms during the Cold War. As I heard from the elderly in my village, some of these weapons were used in the 1979 Sino- Vietnamese War. After the Cultural Revolution, Deng Xiaoping s interpretation of world politics as peace and development gradually replaced Mao s policy of war and revolution. Consequently, the Third Front projects were abandoned and my hometown has since experienced decay. As my father told me, I was sleeping in a cradle when the last group of Shanghaiist industrial workers left our village in 1987. Many years later, I learned that along with these changes in my hometown, the politics of China had simultaneously gone through tremendous shifts. A new era had come, which shaped the life of my own and later generations. The re-buildup of the congress system, an important part of this political change, is the topic of this PhD project. The design, fieldwork and writing process of this dissertation have been ongoing over the course of four years, for which I owe so much to so many. First, I owe an immense intellectual debt to my supervisors Frank Pieke and Daniela Stockmann, without whose inspiration, encouragement and help this project would certainly have been impossible. Frank is a great coach-style supervisor, from whom I have been granted enough freedom to develop my own interests, thoughts and plan, while being kept on track by his challenges, inspiration, guidance, and ever-lasting support from beginning to end. I have been very fortune that he treated me already like the scholar I hope one day to become. Danie is very busy but has been committed to giving me helpful feedback and suggestions on my chapters, even sometimes when based abroad or on a flight. I also owe a special debt of thanks to Patricia Thornton. She has been a constant source of inspiration and encouragement since my research visit to the University of Oxford. Her interest, knowledge, and insights helped greatly polish my thoughts and broaden my theoretic horizons. I am indebted, too, to Philippe Schmitter who provided a great deal of helpful feedback and intellectual support at various stages of this project. All these mentors provided me with role models of what it means to be a scholar, teacher and advisor. My PhD project has been financed by a four-year doctoral grant and a generous amount of research funds from Leiden University. Field research and intellectual training were supported by the Leiden University Institute of Area Studies, the Department of Political Science, the Erasmus Foundation, the Leiden University Fund, Leiden Global, the University of Oxford, xiii
xiv Acknowledgement Fudan University, National Taiwan University, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, the ECPR Winter School, the Oslo University Summer School, and the Potsdam University Summer School. These institutions or foundations provided generous support either for study, research, travel and conference, or for substantial infrastructure and administrative assistance, all of which were indispensable to a years-long project. I am also grateful to a lot of outstanding colleagues at theses institutes for many stimulating discussions and debates on related topics. For a fruitful fieldwork in Mainland China and Taiwan, I would like to thank many scholars and friends for their intellectual inspiration, logistical assistance and moral support along the way. They include Chao Yung-Mau, Yeh-lih Wang, Pu Xingzu, Lei Tao, Li Fan, He Junzhi, Chen Mingming, Guo Dingping, Chen Zhouwang, Sun Guodong, Li Hui, Xiong Yihan, Peng Yong, Qiu Jiajun, Bao Gangsheng, Yu Jianxing, Lang Youxing, He Baogang, Liu Hong, Xiong Wei, Chih-yu Shih, Teng-chi Chang, Chia-hung Tsai, Ching-hsin Yu, Jiawei Liu, Wuxie Chen, Ting-Jieh Wang, Ming-Hsien Chen, Xu Heqian, Zhuang Ruilin, Zhang Chen, Shao Lei, Liao Xinmiu, Xiong Niangang, Du Huan, Liu Leming, and many others. For many informants and interviewees who offered substantial assistance and help during the fieldwork but cannot be named here, I bear your names in my mind and you all know who you are. Several of the chapters of this thesis were presented at the 2016 World Congress of International Political Science Association, the 2016 Joint Sessions of European Consortium for Political Research, the 21st Biennial Conference of the European Association for Chinese Studies, the 12th Graduate Seminar on China at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the International Conference of Comparing the Concepts of Representation at SciencesPo, as well as many small talks and workshops. Although I cannot acknowledge individually the many organizers, hosts, discussants and audience participants who made these gatherings so instructive and thought-provoking, their comments, suggestions and insights are well taken for the improvement of the quality of this thesis. The research design chapter and the comparison chapter were initially presented at several methods schools. I have greatly appreciated the substantial advice from the course tutors, Benoit Rihoux, Andrew O Bennett, and Giampietro Gobo, as well as the discussions with my fellow students. A paper based on an adjusted version of chapter four is forthcoming in the Journal of Contemporary China, I thank the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their sound advice. My further appreciation goes to ECPR Standing Group of Parliaments and Election Studies, ECPR Standing Group of Democratic Innovations, and ECPR Research Network on Authoritarian Regimes. Scholarly interactions and exchanges with colleagues in these groups provided me with comparative perspectives and broader scholarly views. I am also especially grateful to the four external examiners, André Gerrits, Thomas Heberer, Petr Kopecký and Patricia Thornton, whose thoughtful feedback, criticisms and recommendations from different perspectives helped me a great deal in finalizing the dissertation and contemplating my future research. I wish to
Acknowledgement xv emphasize that I alone is responsible for any remaining error, mistake, and omission, which I hope will have an opportunity to correct and revise in the future. PhD research is like a long journey creeping through a tunnel. There are always times of darkness, depression, frustration, loneliness, loss and even hopelessness. I have been very fortunate to have many dears (qin men) who walked with me until there was a ray of light at the end of the tunnel. I greatly appreciate the company and support of my friends and fellow researchers here in the Netherlands or at the other end of the phone or Wechat. They are Chen Bo, Chen Liang-yu, Chen Yuan, Jia Shoubo, Joshua Chan, Ken Cheuk, Liu Jifeng, Li Anhua, Luo Ting, Ma Xiao, Ma Xinrong, Nina Jenq, Sarthak Bagchi, Tabitha Speelman, Tan Yujing, Tian Xu, Vincent Ni, Wang Guopeng, Wang Qiang, Wang Qing, Wang Shu-li, Wang Zhongxiao, Xia Lizi, Xu Heqian, and others. I am deeply grateful to friends and team members at the PhD Council and the ICL, and particularly those in two interest groups, Doctor Beer and EuroScope, that I have been deeply involved in. You all made my life more colorful and enjoyable and reminded me that the meaning of studying abroad goes beyond the pages of this thesis. Last but not least is my gratitude to my parents for their warm understanding, constant support and endless love. They cannot fully understand what I am talking about in this thesis, but they faithfully believe that what I am currently doing is meaningful (just their belief). They hadn t even made it to high school due to the era of turmoil, but they believe education is the only possible way for a rural boy to make a better life and now they will embrace a son with a foreign doctoral degree in whom they invested all their youth and hope. Mom and Dad, it is my honor and privilege to dedicate this book, with love, to you. In addition, my appreciation for the love, care and help of my younger brother, Wang Zheng, has always given me is growing over the years. He helped me book all the travel tickets and accommodations for my fieldwork and shouldered all the responsibilities of taking care of our parents and dealing with family issues when I was absent. I am feeling so blessed to have a blood brother while most Chinese contemporaries don t given the one-child policy. I was born in a Shanghaiist immigrant village, I made it all my way to study in Shanghai as a student, and now after five years abroad I will go back to work and start my new life in Shanghai. Life goes round in a nice circle, doesn t it? I believe I can see more of Chinese political development during my lifetime.