A Framework to Explain Regime Resilience Among Protests: Regime-Engaging and Regime-Threatening Protests in China

• In Event: 559 - Regular Session. Development

Abstract

Scholarship has tended to see that rising protests in authoritarian states signal regime decline. Yet China abounds with protest, but the regime’s hold on power and capacity for governing remains strong. Why does the Chinese regime remain resilient despite mounting social protests? I argue that it is critical to distinguish two types of protests: regime-engaging and regime-threatening protests. In regime-engaging protests, both the state and protesters accept the legitimacy of the other side and are open to negotiation; whereas in regime-threatening protests, both sides reject the legitimacy of the other and refuse negotiation. The two kinds of protests are ideal types and a protest may move from one to the other. Yet the distinction matters: regime-engaging protests help maintain regime legitimacy and resilience, whereas regime-threatening protests undermine them. Based on an original dataset of 1,418 protest events in China, my quantitative study suggests that regime-engaging protests are prevalent in the country. Further, case study demonstrates that in regime-engaging protests, informal norms of contention play a role in regulating actions of both authorities and protesters and promoting both sides to work on resolving conflicts through negotiations. By contrast, case study of regime-threatening protests exhibits a vicious cycle of conflict escalation and poses a great challenge to the regime. This research contributes to explaining the resilience of the Chinese regime. The conceptual model of regime-engaging and regime-threatening protests developed in this research can be employed to monitor the trajectory of political contention not only in China but also in other authoritarian regimes.

Author

• Yao Li, Johns Hopkins University