Making Welfare Work for Autocracy: Regime Durability in China

• In Event: New Perspectives on Chinese Politics

Abstract

In this paper, I examine the effect of welfare expansion on the resilience of an authoritarian regime. On the one hand, the social contract theory suggests that there is an implicit bargain between an authoritarian regime and the mass where the latter traded in popular acquiescence for the assurance of their economic and social wellbeing. On the other hand, democratization theories demonstrate that the relationship between a growing middle-income class and democratic transition is tenuous at best. Neither theories, however, explain well the variation of subnational welfare expansion in autocracy, and the contingency effect of welfare expansion on the middle-income class for regime durability.

To address this gap, I examine welfare variation in a typical sample of 114 strategically important cities in China. I define them strategically important cities based on two criteria: either they are cities with special political status, or they have high concentration of population. For the latter criterion, based on the UN category of large cities, I select cities with at least 5 million population. These city cases taken together represent the geographic hotspots for regime stability because they are the regional political centres and prone to mass unrest due to high concentration of population. How authoritarian leaders address the public welfare in these cities either through repression or provision of welfare benefit can help us understand regime durability. I use ten years (2007-2016) of city-level data on public spending and outcomes, and social security (medical, pension and unemployment insurances) for cluster analysis and demonstrate four distinct welfare regimes in the city level. The quantitative data is further supported by interviews from one-year fieldwork conducted in five large cities that are geographically situated in the coastal South, Northeast and Central China. The city-level analysis brings a new perspective to subnational welfare variation, distribution and effects in the China-focused literature as well as in the study of authoritarianism.

I argue that regional differences in class formation and public demands led to different responses from local leaders for their political survival in large cities. The crux of the process though is in the Party leaders’ ability to compartmentalize the sources of legitimacy regionally for regime survival. The result is growing commodification in cities with large middle-income class where social security obligations are being offloaded from public budget and a productive welfare regime is firmly taking into shape. The growing middle-income class in these cities are the chief beneficiaries of the expansion of social security and education spending. However, instead of reducing public reliance on state from increasing commodification, the welfare expansion helped increase people’s dependence on the Party-state by binding access to public education and other welfare needs to their participation in social security. The indirect effect is shaping a middle-income class that has vested interest in the regime stability.

In contrast to the productive welfare regime, a residual protective welfare regime is maintained with heavy subsidy in cities with lagging economy and strong vested interest groups. The main beneficiaries of the residual provision are the low-income class for whom weak local economy does not provide an alternative. What is interesting is that in some cities with productive welfare regime and vibrant economy, large working class in low-income range do not necessarily receive similar social protection like the residual protective regime. Due to high growth in the local economy, market is expected to be their alternative but to no avail. As a result, these cities experience mass unrest on labour dispute issues.

The macro effect is the acquiescence of the middle-income class in the cities with productive welfare regime and also low-income class in the protective regime. While the expansion of welfare benefit in forms of social security and protection and education has increased regime durability with the implicit acquiescence of both classes, the social contract is increasingly vulnerable under an economy with declining growth and demographic shift.

Author

• Asif Bin Farooq, University of Toronto