Liberating Grassroots Rulers: A Justification for Democracy in China

• In Event: Democracy Theory and Chinese Political Thought

Abstract

A branch of realist political theory and contemporary Chinese political thought recently converge on a theme that any genuinely realist normative theory of politics must take rulers’ interests seriously. Realists argue that almost all rulers, in order to preserve their rule, have a genuine interest in providing citizens with a justification for their power so that they can create a society that transcends brute coercion. Political theorists who disregard this interest and refuse to convince rulers that making changes can enhance their legitimacy would rarely exercise any meaningful practical impact and indulge themselves in a kind of “wishful thinking” about political change. In the Chinese context, political theorists like Daniel Bell and Jiwei Ci argue that incorporating some quasi-democratic mechanisms in the one-party regime, such as more freedom of speech and association than currently allowed and more channels of democratic participation than currently established, is in line with the CCP’s long-term, rational interests. By allowing citizens to air their discontents and giving them some agency, they claim, these mechanisms can contribute to political stability and enhance the quality of governance. Both theorists believe that this realist justification for certain democratic reforms can work in China, as the CCP has a strong desire in legitimating their rule after the fading of communist ideology and slowdown of economic growth. This line of thinking has incurred criticism from both realist and moralist political theorists, as “taking rulers’ interests seriously” would easily turn theorists into accomplices of unjust rule.

In this paper we accept the problems plaguing “ruler-interested realism,” but argue that this realism can lead to a justification for radical political change—in the Chinese context, a fundamental regime change. Ruler-interested realists in general and Chinese realists in particular, when discussing the concept of “rulers,” fail to unpack the internal structure of the ruling class and consider the possibility that different rulers in a political system may conceive of their interests differently. In a multilayered and hierarchical political system like China’s, although the CCP can be regarded as a collective whole, rulers in central and local governments may have diverging demands for legitimating themselves in front of citizens. While the highest echelon of the political system constantly demands all subordinate cadres to support its forever rule, it is possible that lower-level officials would find toppling their superiors to be a better means for preserving and legitimating their rule. This fact gives political theorists the space to construct ruler-interested theories for one section of the rulers in order to overthrow another, thus achieving radical political changes.

Based on a case study of contemporary China’s grassroots governance—bureaucratic overload—we aim to provide a realist, ruler-interested, and context-specific justification for democracy in China: democracy is justified not only as a means to liberating ordinary people from the oppression of the centralized party-state as a whole, but also as a superstructure that can liberate grassroots-level bureaucrats from the exploitation of a totalistic central government.

In China’s hierarchical political system, the central government, due to what we call a “legitimacy anxiety,” adopts an approach of governance that ensures absolute security and stability in Chinese society. To construct an image as a benevolent ruler, they overburden grassroots bureaucrats with extensive governance tasks in the name of promoting people’s interests. In the meantime, they also intensify monitoring and control over them to prevent political deviation and misconduct. The grassroots bureaucrats, with limited political, fiscal, and personnel capacity, find their time and energy sapped by staggering amounts of red tape, such as endless form-filling, documentation, and meetings. The prevalent frustration, alienation, and career burnout among grassroots cadres not only affects their health and job performance, but risks undermining governance outcomes. Grassroots rulers could have performed better and built a more harmonious relationship with citizens had the central government not overloaded them with tasks that essentially waste governmental resources. Since this flaw in China’s political system originates in the central government’s legitimacy anxiety, and this legitimacy anxiety originates in the fact that a one-party system has a fundamental difficulty in gauging people’s support, we argue that ending one-party rule and democratizing the political system can significantly alleviate the burdens of local rulers and enhance their governance outcomes. We thus differ from existing theories such as Daniel Bell’s and Baogang He’s, who promote democratization at the grassroots level while arguing that the same process does not have to happen, or should not happen, on the top level of the government.

Authors

• Dongxian Jiang, Fordham University

• Hanyu Zhao, Harvard University