he & warren - authoritarian deliberation

Authoritarian Deliberation:The Deliberative Turn in ChinesePolitical DevelopmentBaogang He and Mark E. Warren

Authoritarian rule in China is now permeated by a wide variety of deliberative practices. These practices combine authoritarianconcentrations of powerwith deliberative influence, producing the apparent anomaly of authoritarian deliberation. Although delib-eration is usually associated with democracy, they are distinct phenomena. Democracy involves the inclusion of individuals in mat-ters that affect them through distributions of empowerments such as votes and rights. Deliberation is a mode of communicationinvolvingpersuasion-based influence.Combinations of non-inclusive power anddeliberative influenceauthoritariandeliberationare readily identifiable in China, probably reflecting failures of command authoritarianism under the conditions of complexity andpluralism produced by market-oriented development. The concept of authoritarian deliberation frames two possible trajectories ofpolitical development in China: the increasing use of deliberative practices stabilizes and strengthens authoritarian rule, or delib-erative practices serve as a leading edge of democratization.

O ver the last two decades, authoritarian regimes inAsia have increasingly experimented with con-trolled forms of political participation and delib-eration, producing a variety of hybrid regimes. Theseregimes mix authoritarian rule with political devices includ-ing elections, consultative forums, political parties, and

legislatures that we would normally associate with democ-racy.1 China is a particularly important case; though itremains an authoritarian country led by the Chinese Com-munist Party (CCP), its government is now permeatedwith a wide variety of participatory and deliberative prac-tices.2 Two decades ago, leaders introduced village-levelelections. Other innovations have followed, includingapproval and recall voting at the local level, public hear-ings, deliberative polls, citizen rights to sue the state, ini-tiatives to make government information public, anincreasing use of Peoples Congresses to discuss policy,and acceptance of some kinds of autonomous civil societyorganizations. While very uneven in scope and effective-ness, many of these innovations appear to have genuinelydeliberative elements, from which political leaders takeguidance, and upon which they rely for the legitimacy oftheir decisions.3 Typically, however, deliberation is limitedin scope and focused on particular problems of gover-nance. Curiously, these practices are appearing within anauthoritarian regime led by a party with no apparent inter-est in regime-level democratization. We refer to this par-adoxical phenomenon as authoritarian deliberation, andits associated ideal-type regime as deliberative authoritari-anism. In the Chinese case, we argue, authoritarian delib-eration is conceptually possible, empirically existent, andfunctionally motivated. Authoritarian deliberation is nor-matively significantbut, as the concept implies, it is alsonormatively ambiguous.

Although we focus on the Chinese case, our analysisshould be understood as a contribution to comparative

Baogang He is Chair in International Studies in the Schoolof International and Political Studies, Deakin University,Australia, distinctive professorship (20102015), TianjinNormal University, China ([email protected]).Mark E. Warren teaches political theory at the Universityof British Columbia, where he holds the Harold andDorrie Merilees Chair for the Study of Democracy([email protected]). The authors would like to thankLesley Burns, Tim Cheek, Steve Goldstein, Sean Gray, KenFoster, Jeffrey Isaac, John Dryzek, Robert Goodin, AlanJacobs, Guo Li, Sun Liang, Hua Ma, Jane Mansbridge,Marc Plattner, Paul Quirk, Lisa McIntosh Sundstrom,Daniel Treisman, and Yves Tiberghien, as well as the anon-ymous referees for Perspectives on Politics for their veryhelpful criticisms, comments, and suggestions. Previousversions of this paper were presented at the 2008 AmericanPolitical Science Convention, Harvard University, OxfordUniversity, Australian National University, and FudanUniversity. They gratefully acknowledge the support ofAustralian Research Council (DP0986641), the SocialSciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, andthe Shibusawa Eiichi Memorial Foundation of Japan.

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Research Articles

doi:10.1017/S1537592711000892 June 2011 | Vol. 9/No. 2 269

political theory, an emerging style of political theory thatelaborates normatively-significant concepts in ways thatare both attentive to contexts, particularly non-Westerncontexts, while enabling comparisons across contexts.4 Ourprimary aim is not to provide new empirical knowledge ofChina, but rather to develop the concept of authoritariandeliberation from within democratic theory by combin-ing two familiar concepts into an unfamiliar concept, andthen to argue that this concept helps to both explain andilluminate a distinctive set of normative potentials andrisks for democracy within Chinese political development.

Ourfirst claim is orientedbydemocratic theory.Wearguethat authoritarian deliberation is theoretically possible.Democracy, aswe conceive it, involves the empowered inclu-sion of individuals in matters that affect them by means ofvotes, voice, and related rights.Deliberation ismodeof com-munication inwhich participants in a political process offerand respond to the substance of claims, reasons, and per-spectives in ways that generate persuasion-based influ-ence.5 There are important structural and institutionalrelations between democratic empowerment and delibera-tive influence: democratic empowerments ensure that actorsare able to resolve conflicts bymeansof arguments andvotes.However, it is possible for deliberative influence to affectpolitical decision-making in the absence of democraticempowerments, assuming that (authoritarian) elites haveother kinds of incentives, such as functional needs for coop-eration and legitimacy.That is, the linkages betweendemoc-racy and deliberation are contingent rather than necessary,leavingopen the theoretical possibilityof authoritariandelib-eration as a form of rule.

Following this logic, we then develop the ideal type ofdeliberative authoritarianisma regime style that makesfrequent use of authoritarian deliberation. In developingthis ideal type, we depart from much of the literature onhybrid regimes. The literature has focused extensively onincomplete democratic transitions, especially those involv-ing regime change from authoritarian to electoral democ-racy, while retaining many of the elements of authoritarianrule, including weak rights and uncertain freedoms, weakrule of law, on-going patronage relationships, weak civil-ian control of the military, and corruption.6 Viewed inthese terms, the Chinese case is distinctive: to date, therehas been no regime-level democratization. Lacking thiskind of regime trajectory, China is not an incomplete,pseudo, or illiberal democracy, terms often applied todynamic cases.7 Nor do the terms competitive or elec-toral authoritarianism describe its distinctive one-partyrule.The regime exhibits, rather, a resilient form of author-itarianism that, as Nathan argues, draws its strength fromreforms that increase the adaptability, complexity, auton-omy, and coherence of state organization. The regime isachieving these capacities through an increasingly norm-bound succession process, an increasing use of merit-based considerations in top leadership selection, an

increasing functional differentiation and specialization ofstate organizations, and new participatory institutions thatenhance the CCPs legitimacy.8 We agree with Nathan. Inideal-typing features of the Chinese case as deliberativeauthoritarianism, however, we are focusing our analysison mechanisms of conflict management and decision-making rather than regime nature and classification assuch. Thus we intend the concept of deliberative author-itarianism to compare to those concepts of hybrid author-itarian regimes that identify supplements to commandand control decision-making. These supplements includelimited elections and institutional consultations, some cit-izens rights and protections, some local and autonomy,and segmentation by level policy and level of government.They result in regime identifiers such as competitiveauthoritarianism,9 consultative Leninism.10 and con-ditional autonomy within authority structures.11 Thesekinds of classifications are distinct from those based onleadership types, such as personalist, military, and single-party hegemonic authoritarianisms,12 as well as from con-cepts that describe consequences, such as resilientauthoritarianism,13 although China is most certainly asingle-party hegemonic system that is proving to be extraor-dinarily resilient. By developing the concept deliberativeauthoritarianism, we are ideal-typing an apparently para-doxical supplement to authoritarian decision-makingdeliberationthat appears to be assuming an increasingimportant role in Chinese political development.

As we develop the concepts of authoritarian delibera-tion and deliberative authoritarianism as they apply to theChinese case, we also extend the ideal-typical analysis toidentify the complex ways in which deliberative featuresof political development mix with other kinds of institu-tions and practices, including protests, some rights, andelections. The analysis we offer here ideal-types a regimestrategy of channeling political conflict away from regime-level participation, such as multi-party competition, andinto governance-level participation, segmented intopolicy-focused, often administratively- or juridically-organized venues. We then survey some of the emergingdeliberative features of these governance-level venues inorder to indicate that authoritarian deliberation is empir-ically existent and (we believe) an important feature ofrecent Chinese political development. We next discuss akey methodological problem: under authoritarian condi-tions, it is not always easy to distinguish forms of partici-pation common under authoritarianisms that mobilizepeople for shows of support .as in the former Soviet Union,Cuba, and Maoist China, from those that generate delib-erative influence. We argue, however, that the theoreticalcategories developed here show us where to look for empir-ical indicators that would distinguish deliberative influ-ence from, say, coerced participation.

We then return to theory to ask why would an author-itarian regime resort to deliberative politics. Our initial

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Research Articles | Authoritarian Deliberation

270 Perspectives on Politics

take is functional: problems of governance in complex,multi-actor, high-information, high-resistance environ-ments may provide elites with incentives to rely on delib-eration in the absence of democratic empowerments, thusproducing a systemic (though contingent) relationshipbetween authoritarianism and deliberation. Thesefunctionally-driven deliberative developments are notunique to China: governments in the developed democ-racies have been innovating with new forms of gover-nance over the last few decades in response to many ofthe same kinds of pressures. Winning elections is ofteninsufficient to provide legitimacy for particular policies,leaving administrative agencies with the problem of man-ufacturing legitimacy through stakeholder meetings, con-sensus conferences, hearing and comment periods,partnerships with non-governmental organizations, andother kinds of governance devices.14 What distin-guishes China is that governance-level participation isdeveloping in the absence of regime-level democratiza-tion, combined with a high degree of experimentalismwith consultation, deliberation, and limited forms ofdemocracy.15

Finally,we speculate that authoritariandeliberation is con-tingently dynamic.We illustrate the claim by stylizing twopossible (but not exhaustive) trajectories of political devel-opment.Onepossibility is that deliberativemechanismswilltransform authoritarianism supportively in ways that arecompatible with complex, de-centered, multi-actor mar-ket societies, thus forestalling regime democratization.Although the challenges are significantly greater in Chinadue to geographic size and vast population, we believe thisscenario to be the most likely in the short term. A secondpossibility, however, is that the CCPs increasing relianceon deliberative influence for its legitimacy effectively locksit into incremental advances in democratic empowerments,just because they provide a means of broadening and reg-ularizingdeliberative influence.Under this scenario, democ-racywould be driven by functional problems of governanceand led by deliberation, in contrast to regime change fol-lowing the more familiar liberal model, in which auton-omous social forces propel regime-level democratizationthe pattern most evident in the democratic transitions ofthe last three decades. We conclude by identifying severalpossible mechanisms of such a transition.

The Concept of AuthoritarianDeliberationSince deliberation is often seen as an element of democ-racy, authoritarian deliberation is not part of our arsenalof concepts within democratic theory. The concept is,however, theoretically possible andas we suggest belowidentifies an empirically existent phenomenon. The theo-retical possibility follows from a distinction betweendemocracy and deliberation. Democracy, as we conceiveit, involves the inclusion of individuals in matters that

potentially affect them, realized through distributions ofempowerments such votes, voice, and related rights. Delib-eration is mode of communication in which participantsin a political process offer and respond to the substanceof claims, reasons, and perspectives in ways that generatepersuasion-based influence.

Under most circumstances democracy and deliberationare structurally related. On the one hand, deliberationneeds protection from coercion, economic dependency,and traditional authority if it is to function as a means ofresolving conflict and making decisions. Democratic insti-tutions provide these protections by limiting and distrib-uting power in ways that provide the inducements andspaces for persuasion, argument, opinion, and demonstra-tion. These spaces allow for the formation of preferencesand opinions, enable legitimate bargains and, sometimes,consensus. On the other hand, though highly imperfect,established democracies have a high density of institu-tions that underwrite deliberative approaches to politics,such as politically-orientedmedia, courts, legislatures, advo-cacy groups, ad hoc committees and panels, and universi-ties. Relative to other kinds of regimes, democracies aremore likely to have institutions that enable deliberativeinfluence in politics. Whatever their other differences, alltheories of deliberative democracy presuppose this closeand symbiotic relationship between democratic institu-tions and deliberation.16

It is because of this theoretically and empirically robustconnection betweendemocracy anddeliberation that dem-ocratic theorists have typically not focused on themore dif-ficult problem of identifying and theorizing deliberativeinfluence under authoritarian circumstanceswith theexception that increasing attention is being paid to delib-eration within (nominally authoritarian) bureaucracies inthe established democracies.17 For good reason, authoritar-ian systems such as China have seemed unpromising ter-rain forpolitical deliberation.18 Countrieswith authoritarianregimes are, onaverage,unfriendly todeliberative approachestoconflict, evidencednotonlyby the (typically) closednatureof decision-making itself, but also in limits on spaces of pub-lic discourse and its agentsthe press, publishing houses,the internet, advocacy groups, and universities. The idealmeans of authoritarian rule is command, not deliberation.The ideal outcome isto use Max Webers termslegitimate domination, in which the conduct of the ruledoccurs as if the ruled had made the content of the com-mand the maxim of their conduct for its very own sake.19

When authoritarian rule is legitimate, the ruled accept com-mandsbecause theyoriginate in an authoritative source suchas traditions, leaders, or because the ruled accept the rea-sons provided by rulers.

Yet democratic empowerments are contingently ratherthan necessarily linked to deliberative politics. Theoreti-cally, deliberation can occur under authoritarian condi-tions when rulers decide to use it as a means to form

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preferences and policies, but do so without institutional-ized distributions of democratic powers to those affected.To identify the theoretical possibility of deliberative poli-tics under authoritarian conditions, then, deliberationshould identify persuasive influence about matters of com-mon concern under a wide variety of non-ideal settings.In contrast, democracy should identify empowerments suchas votes and rights that function to include those affectedby decisions in making those decisions.

When successful, deliberation generates what Parsonscalls influence, which he conceives as a

generalized symbolic medium of interchange in the same generalclass as money and power. It consists in the capacity to bringabout desired decisions on the part of the other social unitswithout directly offering them a valued quid pro quo as an induce-ment or threatening them with deleterious consequences. Influ-ence must operate through persuasion, however, in that its objectmust be convinced that to decide as the influencer suggests is toact in the interest of a collective system with which both aresolidary.20

Following Parsons, we understand deliberation broadly,as any act of communication that motivates others throughpersuasion without a quid pro quothat is, in waysthat are not reducible to threats, economic incentives, orsanctions based on tradition or religion. As we use theterm, deliberative influence is generated by the offeringand receiving of claims and arguments, where the induce-ments follow from the acceptability of the claims andarguments themselves. Deliberation does not encompassall communication, and in particular it excludes commu-nications which simply convey incentives or threats thatare not, in themselves, cognitively persuasive. Persuasiveinfluence in this sense can include bargains and negotia-tions, but only if they depend upon the commitments ofparties to fair procedures and their outcomesthat is, torules that can themselves be justified by reference to claimsto fairness or other normative validity claims.21 We alsounderstand styles of deliberation broadly, as any kind ofcommunicationdemonstrations, rhetoric, or story-tellingthat is intended to persuade without resort tocoercion or quid pro quos.22

Importantly, deliberation excludes two other kinds ofcommunication, a distinction that will become importantlater. Deliberation excludes communications that are purelyinstrumental, and intended to convey information about,say, the content of a command and the incentives forobedience. In this kind of case, the communication moti-vates only because it references incentives that are externalto the content of the communication. An ideal-typicalexample of an instrumental communication would be acoercively-enforced command. Deliberation also excludescommunications that are purely strategic, in the sense thatthe party offering the claim does so to induce a responseto the content of the claim that furthers goals external tothe cognitive content of the claim. An ideal-typical exam-

ple would be a promise made by a candidate solely for thesake of gaining a vote.

In contrast, democracy refers not to communication,but a distribution of powers of decision to those poten-tially affected by collective decisions. Democratic meansof empowerment include the rights and opportunities tovote for political representatives in competitive elections,and sometimes to vote directly for policies, as inreferendums and town meetings. In addition, democraticmeans of empowerment include representative oversightand accountability bodies; the rights to speak, to write,and to be heard; rights to information relevant to publicmatters; rights to associate for the purposes of represen-tation, petition, and protest; as well as due process rightsagainst the state and other powerful bodies.23

Considered generically then, democracies disperse thesekinds of empowerments in ways that those affected bydecisions have some influence over them. The conceptualopposite of democracy is authoritarianism. Authoritar-ian systems concentrate the power of decision, typically inthe hands of a ruler who dictates, a military structure, orat the apex of a single organization structure, such as ahegemonic political party.

In making the distinction between kinds of communi-cation and distributions of decision-making powers, then,we follow Habermas and Goodin24 rather than Thomp-son and Cohen, both of whom view democratic deliber-ation as a kind of deliberation oriented toward the makingof binding decisions.25 While there are very good reasonsfor this kind of stipulationto distinguish political delib-eration from other kinds of deliberation for exampleour purposes are different. Because we want to identifythe conceptual possibility of authoritarian deliberation,we need to sort out kinds of communication from loca-tions of decision-making power. Within democratic set-tings, the distinction is straightforward: deliberationoften leads to a decision. But the decision itself is (typi-cally) a consequence of voting or consensusproceduresthat assign each member of the decision-making unit apiece of binding decision-making power, or authorizerepresentatives to make decisionswhether or not mem-bers have successfully persuaded others of the merits ofthe decision. However important deliberation may be tothe legitimacy of a vote-based decision, deliberation,as Goodin argues, is about discovery and persuasion,and is not in itself a decision-making procedure: Firsttalk, then vote.26 In democracies, decisions are typicallythe consequence of voting or vote-based authorization ofrepresentatives, not deliberation. Even in cases of consen-sus, voting still stands as an implicit part of the processthe moment in which the work of deliberation istransformed, unanimously, into a collectively bindingdecision.

Once we distinguish between deliberative influenceand decision-making, we can then conceptually describe

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contexts within which deliberation is followed not by dem-ocratic decisions, but rather by the decisions of (unelected)political authoritiesparty officials or bureaucrats, forexample.Thus, for example, participants in a process mightdeliberate an issue, influencing one another through per-suasion and generating a common position which all findacceptable. An authority might then make a decision thatreflects and accepts the substance of the deliberation, ordefers to the weight of opinion developed within a delib-erative process. The authority retains the power of deci-sion, but the decision borrows, as it were, its legitimacyfrom deliberation.

If deliberation and democracy are distinct in theorythe one a kind of communication, the other a distributionof powers to decidethey have often been distinct inpractice as well. Historically, deliberation has appeared innumerous nondemocratic contexts, as in themany instancesin which palace courts and religious institutions sought tolegitimize their political rule through consultative and delib-erative means, just as early legislative institutions with nar-row representative bases engaged in deliberation.27 Indeed,deliberation within representative institutions has oftenbeen thought to trade off against democracy: the moreaccountable representatives are to constituents, the lessroom they have for deliberative judgments, a trade-offevident in majoritarian, strong-party legislatures.28 Like-wise, todays democracies have many spaces of deliberativedecision-making that are not democratic in a robust sensebecause they exclude those affected or their representa-tives. Closed jury sessions and hearings, Supreme Courtdecisions, expert panels, and many deliberative publicforums all fit into this category.29 These non-democraticdeliberations may be entirely justified by other reasonsjust not by their origins in democratic empowerments, atleast as we use the term here. And democracy, famously,can be non-deliberative, as it is with any inclusive decision-makingmechanism that simply aggregates preferences suchas voting-based majoritarianism.

Deliberative Authoritarianism as anIdeal TypeThese observations can be ideal typed. If deliberation is aphenomenon different in kind from democracy, then (in

theory) it might combine with non-democratic (author-itarian) distributions of power. We illustrate the idealtypes in Table 1, where the terms authoritarian anddemocratic refer to the relative dispersion of means ofempowerment (dispersion, by implication, provides moreopportunities for the affected to exercise power), whilecommunication can vary from instrumental to strate-gic and deliberative.. The combinations produce fivefamiliar types, and one unfamiliar type, deliberativeauthoritarianism.

Working across the table, the term instrumental com-munication refers to the use of communication to expresspreferences, without regard to the preferences of others.Aggregative democracy describes situations in which deci-sions reflect preferences that are aggregated (typically) byvoting, and communication is primarily about expressingpreferences. Instrumental communication combined withconcentrated powers of decision produces command author-itarianism, in which power holders use communicationsolely to indicate the content of commands.

Strategic communication refers to the use of communi-cation to express preferences, with the aim of maximiz-ing an agents preferences while taking into account thepreferences of others. Bargaining-based democracy describesa form of rule in which participants use communicationto express their preferences and to negotiate, and in whichthey are able to use powers such as votes and rightsinduce others to take their preferences into account. Butwhen strategic communication combines with concen-trated powers of decision, we might refer to consultativeauthoritarianism, a form of rule in which power holdersuse communication to collect the preferences of thosetheir decisions will affect and take those preferences intoaccount as information relevant to their decision-making.

Deliberative communication, as suggested above, refersto the use of communication to influence the preferences,positions, arguments, reasons, and justifications of others.Deliberative democracy refers to the form of rule in whichpowers of decision are widely dispersed in the form ofvotes and rights, but the legitimacy of the decision is basedon the persuasive influence generated by communication,or the acceptability of the process. Following this logic,deliberative authoritarianism describes a form of rule in

Table 1Deliberative authoritarianism

Mode of communicationDistribution of powers of decision More instrumental More strategic More deliberativeMore democratic

(dispersed, egalitarian)Aggregative

democracyBargaining-based

democracyDeliberative

democracyMore authoritarian

(concentrated, inegalitarian)Command

authoritarianismConsultative

authoritarianismDeliberative

authoritarianism

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which powers of decision are concentrated, but powerholders enable communicative contexts that generate influ-ence (responsiveness to claims and reasons) among theparticipants. Power holders are influenced in their deci-sions by the reasons generated by communication amongparticipants and/or by the legitimacy of the process ofreason-giving. Although both democratic and authoritar-ian deliberation make use of persuasive influence, the idealtype implies that authoritarian control of decision-makinginvolves not just concentrated control over decisions thatmay have been widely deliberated, but alsoandimportantlycontrol over the agenda. In an ideal democ-racy, citizens have the powers necessary to introduce delib-erative claims into any issue area, and any level ofgovernment. In an authoritarian regime, elites control thedomain and scope of deliberation, and limit citizens capac-ities to put issues onto the political agenda. Authoritari-anism thus implies that elites control not just what policiesor issues are deliberated, but also the forums, levels oforganization, timing, and duration.

In short, these combinations produce three familiar typesof democracy: aggregative democracy, bargaining-baseddemocracy, anddeliberative democracy, aswell as two famil-iar typesof authoritarianism: traditional (command) author-itarianism, and consultative authoritarianisma typeincreasingly recognized in the literature, and evidenced bypolitical tactics in Singapore,Malaysia, andVietnam,30 cer-tain features of the old Soviet Union,31 as well as in con-temporaryChina.32The unfamiliar possibility, deliberativeauthoritarianismrule via authoritarian deliberationisan ideal typeof regime that combines concentratedpowerthat is, power not distributed to those affected by collectivedecisionswith deliberative communication.

For authoritarian deliberation to exist, deliberative influ-ence must also exist, in the sense that it could be shown(in principle) that elite decisions respond to persuasiveinfluence, generated either among participants, or in theform of arguments made by participants to decision-makers. This point underwrites the distinction betweenauthoritarian deliberation and consultationa distinc-tion that is subtle but important for our argument. Con-sultation, in which decision-makers take into account thepreferences of those their decisions will affect, is pervasiveinmost kinds of regimesincluding authoritarian regimes.In China, consultative processes often shade into delib-erative processes. As ideal types, however, the processesare distinct. Whereas consultation implies that decision-makers ask for, and receive information from those theirdecisions will affect, deliberation implies that decision-makers will do more than solicit input; they will enable(or permit) space for people to discuss issues, and to engagein the give and take of reasons, to which decisions are thenresponsive. While many instances of public deliberationin China today are continuations of Maoist consultation,they also have distinctive features. Maoist consultations

lacked deliberative element as well as any procedural ele-ments that might ensure fair and equal discussion. Theyserved primarily as tools for ideological political studyimposed from above. In contrast, many public delibera-tions in China today focus on conflicts surrounding con-crete governance issues. There are often norms andprocedures that promote deliberative virtue and ensureequality and fairness. Some deliberative forums like delib-erative polling have direct impact on decision-making.Finally, as we will argue below, these new deliberative pro-cesses may have the potential to set in motion dynamicsthat are potentially democratic even under authoritarian-ism, owing to the fact that its norms and procedures thatare more reciprocal and egalitarian than those in whichdecision-makers merely consult, as well as to the fact thatpersuasive influence requires more deliberate protection.

Ideal Types and the Chinese CaseIdeal types do not, of course, describe empirical cases. Butthey do help to identify features of cases of normativeinterest. The Chinese case exhibits a mix of types; com-mand and consultative authoritarianism are clearly evi-dent, as are some forms of democracy. Indeed, as we shallargue, it is in part because elites do not possess all theresourcesnecessary to commandor evenconsultative author-itarianism, so that the third form of authoritarianismdeliberative authoritarianismhas been emerging. Itsdevelopment should be understood within the context ofa political and administrative system within which thepowers of decision are too dispersed to support commandauthoritarianism alone. The dispersions are consequencesof numerous factors, including a political culture withConfucian and Maoist roots that holds leaders to moralstandards; patterns of economic development that multi-ply veto players; insufficient administrative capacity to rulea huge, complex country; andlast but not leastpolitical institutions that decentralize huge numbers ofdecisions. In addition, there are some voting powers, as invillage elections and an increasing number of intra-partyelections.33 Citizens have more and more rights, thoughthe extent to which they are actionable varies widely owingto the relatively new and uneven development of support-ing judicial structures. There are some kinds of account-ability mechanisms, as with the right to vote on theperformance of village-level officials, as well as some kindsof legal standing enabling citizens to sue officials, althoughsuch standing is highly uneven. And there are powers ofobstruction and de facto petition; Chinese citizens areoften insistently ingenious in organizing protests or engag-ing in public discussions in ways that work around officialcontrols, while leveraging official rules and promises.34

Thus, as a first rough take on the Chinese case, weshould note that the most obviously applicable ideal type,command authoritarianism, is not descriptive of the regimecapacities, largely owing to these broad dispersions of

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powers. But it does not follow that the CCP response tothese dispersions maps onto the democratic ideal types.What we do see, rather, is a strategy of channeling politi-cal demand that makes selective use of consultation, delib-eration, voting, and other forms of controlled participationthat, for the time being, appear to be compatible with,and perhaps expand the capacities of, authoritarian ruleapoint to which we return later.35 Table 2 maps this story.Here we are assuming that political demand is, in largepart, a function of dispersed powers, which we can classinto types of participatory resourcesobstruction, pro-test, voice, rights, accountability mechanisms, voting forpolicies, and voting for representatives in competitiveelectionsidentified in the left-hand column of the table.The top row identifies the domains over which these mech-anisms are operative. Thus, we can find many politicaldevices in China that are familiar in the developed democ-racies. The difference is that, in contrast to the developeddemocracies, the CCP seeks to channel political partici-pation into the domains of administrative decision-making, the economy, the judiciary, andto a very limitedextenta nascent civil society. Let us call this domaingovernance level political participation, reflecting itsproblem-focused, issue and domain segmented nature.36

At the same time, we find little or no development ofpolitical participation at what might be called the regimelevel; powers of dicision have not dispersed to the extentthat they produce autonomous public spheres, indepen-

dent political organizations, independent oversight bodiesor oversight through separations of powers. Nor have theyproduced open-agenda public meetings, citizen initia-tives, ormost obviouslymultiparty elections. Theselimited governance-focused empowerments do not addup to regime democratization. But they do contribute tothe overall pattern of authoritarian deliberation by empow-ering domain and scope-limited forms of voice, and thereexist functioning pockets of democracy constrained bygeographical scope, policy, and level of government. Theconjunction of these resources with domain constraintsmaps the spaces of authoritarian deliberation now emerg-ing in China.

Table 2 also ideal types a regime strategy to channel thebaseline political resourcesobstruction and protestinto functionally-specified, controlled arenas of participa-tion, typically within the administrative and judicialdomains of government, as well as issue-specified dis-course in civil society (the shaded cells), while seeking toavoid regime-level democratization. In short, Table 2 spec-ifies modes of participation that have deliberativeandsometimes democraticdimensions, but which occur inthe absence of independent political organizations, auton-omous public spheres, independent oversight and separa-tions of powers, open-agenda meetings, and multipartyelections.

These distinctions help to identify apparently contra-dictory developments in the Chinese case. On the one

Table 2Regime strategies by domain and individual-level resources

Domains of Participation

Governance-level participationIndividual PoliticalResources

Regime-levelparticipation(Legislative

and executive)Administrative

and judicialCivil society

and economyObstruction, protest Protests, mass mobilization,

consumer actions, laboractions

Voice Autonomouspublic sphere

Surveys, admin andlegislative hearings,deliberative forum

Bounded petitions, media,internet

Rights Independent politicalorganizations

Some judicial rights Property rights, someassociative rights

Accountability Independent oversightbodies, elections,separation of powers

Citizen evaluation forums,village elections, localapproval voting

Party approved NGO andmedia watchdogs

Voting for policies Initiatives, open-agendatown meetings

Empowered deliberativeforums, councils, andcommittees

Voting for representativesin competitive elections

Multiparty elections

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hand, we agree with Peis observation that regime-leveldemocratic change has stalled in China.37 Nor should weidentify these developments as political liberalization. TheFreedomHouse index for political and civic liberties showsthat Chinas record has remained almost unchanged overthe last decade. On the other hand, when we look outsideof regime-level institutions, we find significant changes ingovernance, producing a regime that combines authori-tarian control of domains and agendas with just enoughdemocratizationorderly participation in Chinese offi-cial terminologyto enable controlled deliberation.38

Indeed, what distinguishes China from the establisheddemocracies is not the emergence of governance-level par-ticipation in itself: as noted above, governance-level par-ticipation is evolving rapidly in the established democraciesas well.39 What distinguishes China is that these modes ofparticipation, among them deliberative forms of politics,are evolving in the absence of regime-level democratiza-tion. Indeed, they are sometimes justified as an alternativeto western adversarial, multiparty democracy.40

The Development of DeliberativePolitics in ChinaThe distinctive features of deliberationresponsivenessto reasons, discussion, and attentiveness to what othersare sayinghave deep roots within Chinese political cul-ture.41 Some are traditional, building on Confucian prac-tices of consultation and common discussion.42 Centuriesago Confucian scholars established public forums in whichthey deliberated national affairs.43 Though elitist, the Con-fucian tradition took seriously elite duties to deliberateconflicts, as well as certain duties to procedures of discus-sion.44 These traditions are alive today, expressed in thehigh value intellectuals and many leaders place on policy-making through combinations of reasoned deliberation,scientific evidence, and experimentation-based policycycles.45 In modern China, the Ziyiju (Bureau of Consul-tation and Deliberation) played a significant role in delib-erating and advocating constitutional reform before the1911 Revolution in China. DuringMaos time, elites wereindoctrinated into the mass linea method of leader-ship that emphasized learning from the people throughdirect engagement with their conditions and struggles.That said, as suggested above, while todays public delib-eration is a continuation of Maoist consultation and con-tains elements of consultation, it has distinctive features.Maoist consultation lacked infrastructures of proceduresand rights, and for the most part failed to achieve delib-eration of high quality. For the most part, they were elite-directed exercises in ideological political study. In contrast,public deliberation in China today tends to be focused onconcrete issues of governance, often in direct response toconflict. And, as we will note later, unlike Maoist consul-tation, contemporary forums are increasingly regulated byprocedural guarantees to promote equal voice and fair-

ness, as well as norms inculcating deliberative virtues.More-over, as we will also note, in direct contrast to Maoistconsultation, some processes are directly empowered. Butthere are also continuities. The Maoist mass line empha-sized inclusiveness, equality, and reciprocal influencebetween the people and political elites. Indeed, like theMaoist mass line, the current system remains justified bythe Confucian notion of minben (people-centric) rule.According to this ideal, elites express the voice of andserve the people. No doubt these inheritances help toexplain why deliberative democracy is now a commontopic in academic and policy circles within China, indeed,so much so that the CCP has developed a system of rewardsfor party officials who develop new deliberative processes.

The contemporary wave of deliberative practices datesto the late 1980s, concurrent with the introduction ofvillage elections and other participatory practices46 andadministrative reforms.47 Indicative evidence includeschanges in official terminology. In Maoist China, for exam-ple, participatory activities were called political study,and they were ideologically oriented and politically com-pulsory. Deliberative forums are now often called kentan(heart-to-heart talks), or other names with deliberativeconnotations. In 1987 General Party Secretary Zhao Ziy-ang outlined a social consultative dialogue system asone major initiative in political reform in the ThirteenthParty Congress, followed by a comprehensive scheme ofpopular consultation to be implemented in a number ofareas across China. These experiments were derailed bythe events of Tiananmen Square in 1989, which resultedin a period of authoritarian repression and retrenchment.Nevertheless, they survived as ideational precursors ofinstitutionalized deliberative practices, not least becauseCCP elites were keenly aware of the damage wrought byTiananmen, and quite consciously sought ways of chan-neling dissent even as they engaged in repression.

In 1991 President Jiang Zemin stressed that China needsto develop both electoral and consultative democracy,identifying the National Peoples Congress as the properlocation of former, and Chinese Peoples Political Consul-tative Conference (CPPCC: a body which engages in oftenlengthy deliberations, but lacks either the power of deci-sion or veto) as the site of the latter.48 In 2005 Li Junru,Vice President of the Central Party School, openly advo-cated deliberative democracyas did the Central PartySchools official journal Study Times, which published aneditorial endorsing a deliberative polling experiment inZeguo, Wenling.49 In 2006, deliberative democracy wasendorsed in the Peoples Daily, the official document ofthe Central Party Committee, as a way of reforming theCPPCC.50 And in 2007, the official document of the2007 Seventeenth Party Congress specified that all majornational policies must be deliberated in the CPPCC.Moregenerally, deliberative venues have become widespread,though they are widely variable in level, scale, design, and

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frequency. They exhibit a variety of forms such as elitedebates in different levels of Peoples Congress, lay citizendiscussions via the Internet, formal discussions in the pub-lic sphere, and informal debate in non-governmentaldomains. The more formal events can be, and often are,held monthly, bimonthly, or even quarterly in streets, vil-lages, townships and cities.

In rural areas, deliberative politics have emerged along-side empowerments such as village elections, village rep-resentative assemblies, independent deputy elections forlocal Peoples Congresses, and similar institutions. Begin-ning in the 1990s, many villages developed meetings inwhich officials deliberate village affairs with citizens, aninnovation probably encouraged by imperatives of elec-tion, re-election, and approval voting.51 Indeed, the mean-ing of township elections was not that elections wouldproduce majority ruleas we might assume in theWestbut rather that they would serve as a mechanism ofconsultationthough in practice they can induce delib-eration, particularly when issues are contentious.52 Elec-toral empowerments are often buttressed by protests,obstruction, and rightful resistance movements that havegenerated pressures for elites to consult with the people,53

but which can, in practice, shade into deliberation.There are some indications that these trends are wide-

spread, though by no means universal. In 2004, the totalnumber of meetings with deliberative elements at villagelevel was estimated to be 453,000, a number considerablyhigher than the governments estimated number of pro-tests (74,000) for the same year.54 The 2005 NationalSurvey provided some indications as to the (uneven) pen-etration of village level democratic institutions that wemight expect to generate deliberation.55 Ten per cent ofrespondents (298) reported that decisions on schools androads in their town or city over the last three years weredecided by an all-villagers meeting attended by each house-hold. By contrast, 616 (20.7 percent) said these decisionshad been made by village representative meetings, and744 (25 per cent) by villager leaders. The largest fraction1,318 (44.3 percent)were not sure. The same surveyalso found that the 547 (18.8 per cent) of respondentsreported that decisions on village land contracts were madeby an all-villagers meeting; 524 (18 percent) by villagerepresentatives; 650 (22.3 percent) by village leaders; while1,192 (40.9 percent) were not sure. The survey also foundthat 28.3 percent reported that their villages held twovillage representative meetings in 2004 (while 59.3 per-cent were unsure).56 Such findings indicate that penetra-tion of deliberative devices such as the all-villagers meetingis at least broad enough for demonstration effects, andprobably broad enough to begin to alter the incentives ofthe 3.2 million village officials in the 734,700 villages inChina.57

While broad data about the uses of deliberative venuesare not available, some cases in rural areas exhibit an impres-

sive density. From 1996 to 2000 within Wenling City, amunicipality with almost a million residents, more than1,190 of these deliberative and consultative meetings wereheld at the village level, 190 at the township level, and150 in governmental organizations, schools, and businesssectors. Wenling has by increments developed a form ofdemocracy that combines popular representation withdeliberation.58 As case in point is Zeguo township inWen-ling, where in 2005 officials introduced deliberative poll-ing, using the device to set priorities for the townshipsbudget. Deliberative polling uses random sampling in orderto constitute small (typically a few hundred) bodies ofordinary citizens that are descriptively representative ofthe population. These bodies engage in facilitated pro-cesses of learning and deliberation about an issue, typi-cally over a period of one or two days, and can produceresults that represent considered public opinion.59 Offi-cials in Wenling altered the device by elevating the out-comes of the deliberative poll from its typical advisoryfunction to an empowered status, committing in advanceof the process to abide by the outcomes.60 In 2006, tenout of twelve projects chosen through deliberative pollingwere implemented. The device has also evolved: in themost recent uses (FebruaryMarch 2008, 2009, 2010, and2011), the government opened every detail of the citysbudget to participants.

Whereas deliberative venues in rural locales are oftenrelated to village elections, in urban locales deliberativeand participatory institutions are more likely to emerge asconsequences of administrative rationalization and account-ability.61 Some of these accountability measures generatedeliberative approaches to conflict. Local leaders are increas-ingly using devices such as consultative meetings and pub-lic hearings designed to elicit peoples support for localprojects. Observations fromHangzhou, Fujian, Shanghai,Beijing, and other urban areas suggest that such delibera-tive practices are becoming more widespread, with morethan a hundred public hearings per year being held ineach district.62

The practice of holding public hearingsa consulta-tive institution that may sometimes produce deliberationhas also developed within the area of law. In 1996, thefirst national law on administrative punishment intro-duced an article stipulating that a public hearing must beheld before any punishment is given. More than 359 pub-lic hearings on administrative punishment were held inShanghai alone between 1996 and 2000.63 Another exam-ple is the well-known Article 23 of the Law on Price passedby Chinas National Peoples Congress in December 1997,which specified that the price of public goods must bediscussed in public hearings. At least eleven provinces devel-oped regulations to implement this provision with tenreferring specifically to the idea of transparency andopenness, and nine to the idea of democracy.64 More than1000 public hearings on prices were held across China

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between 1998 and 2001.65 The Legislation Law, passed in2000 by the National Peoples Congress, requires publichearings to be an integral part of decision-making processfor new legislation.66 More than 39 public hearings onnew legislation were held at the provincial level between1999 and 2004,67 including, for example, a national pub-lic hearing on income taxes. In Hangzhou, the govern-ment has developed a web-based public hearing processfor comment on the various drafts of laws or regulations.68

Finally, there are some emerging practices that includeelements of democracy or deliberation, but which arequite limited in scope. They are nonetheless worth men-tioning because they help to fill out the broader pictureof a polity permeated by a diversity of highly unevendeliberative practices. In one state-owned factory, alloca-tions of apartments were decided after an intense delib-eration among ordinary workers and managers.69 Intra-party elections with secret ballots were held in YaAn in2002. There has also been a trend toward publicly-visibledeliberation in the National Legislature, as was evidentin the deliberations over the Draft New Labor ContractLaw in 200607. In addition, there have been experi-ments with participatory budgeting with varying degreesof participation as well as consultationranging from ahighly constrained process in Wuxi to more inclusiveand consultative processes in Xinhe and Huinan from2004 to 2008 (He 2011). There also instances of delib-eration among government bodies, as in the case in whicha committee of Municipal Peoples Congress now exam-

ines the budget submitted by Shenzhen City. Instancesof rights-based representation are beginning to inducedeliberation as well. In 1999, for example, the officialtrade union in Yiwu City began to actively representworkers, producing effective rights, which in turn led tobroader forums on workers rights. And in 2006, thegovernment funded the Poverty Reduction Foundation,which invites international non-governmental organiza-tions (NGOs) to not only to invest, but to engage recip-ients ideas for poverty reduction.

We can make some sense of this high diversity ofparticipatory, consultative, and deliberative practices bymapping them according to the characteristics relevantto identifying authoritarian deliberation. Table 3 distin-guishes practices by level (local versus national), the extentof participation, the likelihood that deliberation exists,and (in bold) the extent of democratic empowerment.Most practices combine a high degree of governmentcontrol of the agenda with either consultation or delib-eration (indicated by the shaded cells). Participation islikely to be encouraged in the more local venues ratherthan in higher-level venues, though deliberation is increas-ingly a characteristic of higher-level bodies such as NationalPeoples Congress. Some of the local practices combinewith limited empowermentsrights to vote, rights toinitiate meeting and organize agendas, rights to equalconcern, and rights to express ones voiceto producehighly robust instances of deliberative influence.70 Theoverall pattern suggests authoritarian deliberation: that is,

Table 3Kinds and locations deliberative politics in China

Degree of DeliberationExtent of participation Domain Limited Consultation ReasoningMore concentrated,

inegalitarianMore local Intra-party elections

Elite-driven participatorybudgeting

Participant-limitedpublic hearings

Consultations on wagesTrade union

representationof workers

Local Peoples Congressdeliberations on andoversight of municipalbudgets

More national Standard (closed)law and policymaking

Public hearing onindividual tax incomeheld by NationalPeoples Congress

High-level deliberation on theNew Labor Contract Law

More dispersed,egalitarian

More local Village electionsIndependent deputy

elections in localPeoples Congresses

Participatory budgetingNGO-led participatory

poverty reductionTownship and county

elections withconsultative features

Rights-driven publicconsultation

Issue-limited debate in pressand internet

Electorally-drivendeliberative villagemeetings

Empowered deliberativepolling

More national No cases No cases Issue-limited debate in thepress and internet

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a high density of venues in which deliberation seems toexert influence, but within the context of government-defined agendas and formal government control ofoutcomes.

A Methodological IssueAlthough we can point to instances of deliberative politicsin China, our analysis has been primarily theoretical, drivenby our interests in democratic theory, and related to theChinese case primarily by means of theoretically-derivedideal types. The evidence is primarily indicative, and notsufficient to generalize about the occurrence of authoritar-ian deliberation relative to other forms of rule.

Identifying authoritarian deliberation faces another sig-nificant problem of evidence as well. Because the conceptidentifies situations in which persuasive influence (theeffects of deliberation) combine with authoritarian decision-making, it will often be unclear as to whether any partic-ular decision reflects the influence generated by deliberationor the (authoritarian) power of decision-making.

Identifying the authoritarian part of the concept isnot difficult, as the evidence is well known and self evi-dent. The Chinese state still maintains a Leninist politicalstructure.71 Most power remains in the hands of unelectedelites, operating within the structures of one-party domi-nation, and without the kinds of empowerments and pro-tections necessary for democratic inclusion.72 Party officialsstill decide whether or not to introduce deliberative meet-ings; they determine the agenda as well as the extent towhich the peoples opinion will be taken into account.They seek to avoid spillover onto non-approved topics,holding deliberations to specific topics. Democracy, Pre-mier Wen Jiabao has said, is one hundred years awaypossible only when China becomes a mature socialistsystem.73

But precisely because of the authoritarian context itwill often be difficult to know whether talk counts as delib-eration. Does the context produce subtle forms of intim-idation?Do participants self-censor, anticipating the powersof authorities? Under authoritarian circumstances, it isalso difficult to know whether authorities are merely con-sulting with citizens, or whether they are influenced bytheir deliberations.

The other ideal types we develop here suffer from fewerambiguities. In the cases of the democratic ideal types, therelative influence of communication and powers of deci-sion can be inferred from outcomes; the modes of empow-erment align with the influence of communication, suchthat, for example, dissent can be inferred from minorityvotes, while winning arguments are reflected in majorityvotes. Likewise, the outcomes of command authoritarian-ism can be inferred from the powers of decision. In thecase of authoritarian deliberationand, to a lesser extent,consultative authoritarianismresearchers must look forevidence of communicative influence on decisions.

This methodological problem reflects a problem of nor-mative significance: authoritarian and totalitarian regimeshave, historically, mobilized participation to provide legit-imacy for command-based decisions. There are numerousexamples, from Francos corporatist authoritarianism toCuba today. The most obvious comparison, however, iswith the former Soviet Union prior to glasnost, which canbe broadly characterized as a form of dictatorship with ahigh level of institutionalized participation, as well as theinvolvement of officially recognized groups in the initialstages of decision-making.74 Stalin, like many dictators,used professional groups as information transmissionbelts, primarily to convey information about decisions.More substantive consultation with groups existed underKhrushchev, particularly with key technocratic elites,75

while under Brezhnev, numerous councils were created todraw the citizens into public life.76 But as Hough notes,even when Lenin, Stalin, and Khrushchev used consulta-tive procedures, they were ruthless in overriding societyspreferences on important matters.77

In the authoritarian and post-authoritarian regimes inSoutheast Asia, particularly Singapore, consultation is nowa regularized feature of rule.78 These regimes seek to gen-erate legitimacy for policies through public consultations;theyunderstand the economic benefits of transparent, com-petent, and clean public administration, and they show anincreasing openness to various forms of NGO participa-tionwithin state-sponsored institutionsprocesses Rodanand Jayasuriya appropriately term administrative incorpo-ration.79 It is likely that consultation is fully consistentwith,andprobably functional for, consolidated authoritarianism.

But at the level of broad comparisons, Chinese author-itarianism differs from cases of mobilized participation:most Chinese people now have opportunities to exit par-ticipatory pressures, effectively blunting this political strat-egy. ChinasMaoist past also favors decentralizing judgmentto the people to a degree not found in the Soviet andSoutheast Asian cases. We also find widespread induce-ments for deliberation such as village elections; there areincreasing numbers of relatively large-scale deliberativeexperiments, such as deliberative polling in Wenling City.Deliberation as an ethos is now widely pursued withinrepresentative and governmental bodies.

And yet, as suggested, identifying instances in whichdeliberation rather than mere consultation exits suffersfrom the difficulties of inferring sources of influenceunder authoritarian conditions. But it is not impossible.Although the burden of evidence for generalization acrossChina is higher than we can meet here, in principle it canbe met in the following ways. First, cases sometimesgenerate counterfactuals from which causality can beinferred. In the case of the Wenling City deliberativepoll, for example, city officials changed their previouslyheld infrastructure priorities in response to the delibera-tions, suggesting an influence that could only be accounted

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for by the outcomes of the deliberative process.80 Sec-ond, researchers are developing indicators of the qualityof deliberation,81 some of which have been applied tothe Wenling case.82 Finally, in-depth case studies, includ-ing participant observation, ethnographic techniques, andinterviews can document the generation of deliberativeinfluenceall techniques used to document deliberationin the Wenling case.83 Such techniques are resource inten-sive. But to fail to frame the evidence through the con-cept of authoritarian deliberation owing to thesemethodological challenges risks missing what may be anormatively important dynamic in Chinese politicaldevelopment.

Why Would an Authoritarian RegimeUse Deliberative Mechanisms?Problems of evidence aside, let us now turn to anotherquestion implied in the concept of authoritarian deliber-ation: Why would elites in an authoritarian regime everresort to devising and encouraging deliberative practicesand institutions? We should not rule out normative moti-vations, of course: the post-Maoist, neo-Confucian cul-ture of China imposes moral responsibilities on leaders torule in accordance with the common good, to demon-strate virtue and to attend to the well-being of the com-munities they oversee.84 Contemporary Confucianssometimes argue that democracy is a second-best route towise rule, given the failures of guardianship.85 And a last-ing effect of the Maoist mass line is the norm that elitesshould listen to the people.

But even where such motivations exist, they would alsoneed to align with the strategic interests of powerful elitesand with established institutions for such practices to evolve.From a strategic perspective, Table 2 identifies the CCPsgamble, that opening the participatory venues at the gov-ernance level will channel political demand into delibera-tive and some highly constrained democratic venues, whilecontaining popular obstruction as well as demand forregime-level democratization. Behind this gamble is a func-tionalist story, one that, in its broad outlines, is commonto developing contexts. In using the term functionalist,we are not proposing causal explanationsthat is not whatfunctionalist frames do. Rather, they identify broad classesof problems by calling attention to the social environ-ments to which a political regime must adapt on pain oflosing capacity, legitimacy, and power.

In the Chinese case the environments conducive to delib-erative experimentation are largely the result of rapidmarket-oriented economic development, which hasincreased the size of the middle class, pluralized sources oftax revenue, created new demands for development-related administrative systems, generated extreme inequal-ities and environmental problems, produced internalmigrations, and reduced the overall capacities of the stateto engage in command and control government.86

While there is no necessary relationship between thelegitimacy and capacity needs of authoritarian elites anddeliberation (as the history of authoritarian regimes amplyillustrates), there may be contingent relationships underconditions that limit the effectiveness of command author-itarianism. For example, the relationship between legiti-macy and deliberation is sometimes evident in internationaldiplomacy and, increasingly, within global civil society. Inglobal relations, for example, power is not distributed dem-ocratically. But there is often a plurality of powers thatlimit the capacities of powerful states and other actors toimpose their wills without incurring high costs. In manycases, the perceptions of costs are sufficient to motivatedeliberation, despite the absence of democratic mecha-nisms of inclusion.87 By analogy, under authoritarian cir-cumstances at the domestic level, states are rarely powerfulenough to control all means of opposition. When they do(as in North Korea), they pay a high economic penalty,which subsequently limits a regimes power simply throughresource constraint. In contrast, owing to its rapid eco-nomic development, sources (and resources) of power inChina are rapidly pluralizing. Under these conditions, rulethrough command and control is likely to be dysfunc-tional because it is insensitive to information and learn-ing, and will fail to generate legitimate agreements thatmotivate participants. Deliberation may simply functionmore effectively to maintain order, generate information,and produce legitimate decisions.

Under these circumstances, some of the incentives fordeliberative politics will be negative, following from thedispersion of veto players that accompanies development,as well as from controlled distribution of political powers,such as village elections. Where there are many veto play-ers, development-oriented elites will have incentives todeliberate: to gather information, to bring conflicting pub-lic and private parties to the table, and to forge coalitionssufficient to governance.

Other kinds of incentives are more positive. Delibera-tion should be functional for governance, enabling bar-gaining, negotiation, and learning, and it should enablethe legitimate forms of cooperation that underwrite col-lective actions in politically complex situations.Development-oriented elites such as Chinas CCP neednot merely compliance, but the willing compliance ofmultiple actors. Thus if deliberation generates legitimacy,even in the absence of democratically dispersed empow-erments, then elites will have incentives to pursue delib-eration. If these conditions exist, then we might expectto see the emergence of what might be called governance-driven deliberationthat is, the use and encourage-ment of deliberative mechanisms by elites for the purposesof expanding the governance capacities of the state.

That there are functional reasons why an authoritarianregime pursuing a development agenda might use deliber-ative mechanisms does not mean, of course, that it will do

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so. But in Chinas case, these functional pressures are realand immediate. In order to maintain its legitimacy basedon development, the CCP must provide basic living stan-dards and social services for a population of over 1.3 bil-lion, which requires, according to the CCPs owncalculations, aminimumannual economicgrowthof aroundsevenor eightpercent. Internally, itmanages74millionpartymembers, a number whichif it were a countrywouldbe the seventeenth largest in theworld. It facesmyriadpolit-ical, social, andeconomicproblems, ranging fromdailypeas-ant and labor actions to collecting taxes from the newlywealthy, environmental issues, security problems, and cor-ruption. These functional demands do not immediatelyexplain authoritariandeliberative responses.But theydo sug-gest a series of more specific hypotheses as to why Chinesepolitical elites might adopt deliberative mechanisms.

First, and perhaps most importantly, deliberative mech-anisms can co-opt dissent and maintain social order. Fol-lowing Hirschmans typology of exit, voice, and loyalty,the CCP faces functional limits in two of the three meansof controlling dissent. Currently, the CCP controls highprofile political dissent with an exit strategy, allowing dis-sidents to immigrate to the US and other countries tominimize their domestic impact. Internally, the CCP buysthe loyalty of party members with senior positions, privi-leges, and grants. But simply owing to their numbers,neither strategy can be applied to the hundreds of mil-lions of ordinary Chinese, who are quite capable of col-lective forms of dissent.88 Suppression is always possibleand often used selectively against internal dissidents. Butlike all overtly coercive tactics, overuse produces dimin-ishing returns.89 In the case of China, suppression risksundermining the increasing openness that supports itsdevelopment agenda, as well as generating internationalattention that may also have economic consequences.Thusvoice is the remaining option for controlling dissent andmaintaining order. The CCP has for some time pursued apolicy of channeling dissent onto a developing court sys-tem,90 as well as into low level elections.91 But CCP offi-cials are discovering, often through trial and error, thatregular and frequent deliberative meetings can reduce dis-sent, social conflict and complaints, while saving money,personnel, and time.92 As Hirschman has noted, relativeto multiparty systems, one-party systems may even increasevoice incentives, since limited options for exit options aremore likely to increase internal pressures for voice. Thereare a great many ways in which customers, voters, andparty members can impress their unhappiness on a firm ora party and make their managers highly uncomfortable;only a few of these ways, and not necessarily the mostimportant ones, will result in a loss of sales or votes, ratherthan in, say, a loss of sleep by the managers.93 Indeed,just because the CCP cannot claim legitimacy based onelectoral victories, it must be attentive to other ways ofgenerating legitimacy.94

Second, deliberative mechanisms can generate informa-tion about society and policy, and thus help to avoid mis-takes in governing. As noted, authoritarian regimes face adilemma with regard to information. Under conditions ofrapid development, authoritarian techniques are often atodds with the information resources necessary to governinformation about operational and administrativematters,as well as the preferences of citizens and other actors.Command-based techniques, however, limit communica-tion and expression,while increasing the incentives for sub-ordinates to husband and leverage information.Controlleddeliberation is one response to this dilemma.And aswehavebeen suggesting in China we in fact see an increasing num-ber of policies subjected to deliberation within controlledsettings such as in the National and local Peoples Con-gresses, within university centers, and within the PartySchools.TheCCP also commonly uses themassmedia andinternet to test policy ideas or new policy by encouragingdebate and discussion on specific topics.95

Third, deliberation can function to provide forums forand exchanges with business in a marketizing economy. InChina, market-style economic development is dramati-cally increasing the number and independence of businessstakeholders with veto powers not only over new invest-ments, but also over tax payments, which can make up thebulk of revenues for many locales.96 Pressures for deliber-ation can and do come from an increasingly strong busi-ness sector. Consultations among public and privateinterests are increasingly institutionalized97a process rem-iniscent, perhaps, of the early history of parliaments inEngland and Europe in which the middle classes bar-gained with monarchs for liberty and political voice inexchange for their tax revenues.98

Fourth, open deliberative processes can protect officialsfrom charges of corruption by increasing credible trans-parency. In a context in which local government revenuesincreasingly depend upon business, almost all officials areregarded as corrupt, not only in public opinion but alsooften by superiors. Officials may learn to use transparentand inclusive deliberative decision-making to avoid orreduce accusations that their decisions have been boughtby developers and other business elites.99

Fifth, in cases where decisions are difficult and inflictlosses, deliberative processes enable leaders to deflect respon-sibility onto processes and thus avoid blame. In China,elites are recognizing that I decide implies I take respon-sibility. But we decide implies that citizens are alsoresponsible, thus providing (legitimate) political cover forofficials who have to make tough decisions. In WenlingCity, to take one example, it is now common for localofficials to begin a decision-making processes by asking agovernmental organization to establish a deliberative meet-ing or forum.100 The government then passes the resultsof the meeting to local legislative institutions, which thenreplicate the results in legislation.

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Finally, to summarize the preceding points, delibera-tive processes can generate legitimacy within a context inwhich ideological sources are fading for the CCP, whiledevelopment-oriented policies create winners and losers.Legitimacy is a political resource that even authoritarianregimes must accumulate to reduce the costs of con-flict.101 While we do not have broad-based evidence tosupport the claim that deliberation is an important sourceof legitimacy in China, there is some indicative evidence:the results of annual deliberative polling suggest that delib-erative polling has enhanced citizens trust in the localgovernment in Zeguo.102

The Developmental Logic ofAuthoritarian Deliberation I:Deliberative AuthoritarianismOur argument is that the apparently puzzling combina-tion of authoritarian rule and deliberative influenceauthoritarian deliberationis conceptually possible,empirically existent, and functionally motivated in the Chi-nese case. But the concept also highlights two importantstructural instabilities: deliberative influence tends to under-mine the power of authoritarian command, and delibera-tion is more effective as a legitimacy-generating resourcefor elites when it flows from democratic empowerments.These instabilities are currently bridged in China throughinternal differentiations among the scope, domain, andlevels of government authority, some limited democracy,deliberative venues within authoritarian institutions, andthe authoritarian leadership of the CCP. The standardexpectation is that the CCP has developed a form of rulethat is relatively stable and highly resilient.103 The insta-bilities identified by the concept of authoritarian deliber-ation are important, however, because they frame twopossibilities of normative interest from the perspective ofdeliberative democratic theory that are consistent withChinese political development, though not exhaustive ofother possibilities. It is certainly possible, for example, forChina to evolve into a clientist- or crony-style capitaliststate based on the successive cooptation of stakeholdersinto the governing structures of the CCPa scenario thatwould follow from the continuing transference of stateassets into private hands, combined with the CCPs encour-agement of wealthy stakeholders to join the party.104 It isalso possible for the CCP to use more coercive powers tomaintain its rule in spite of costs performance and legiti-macy: the habits and resources for command authoritari-anism are deeply entrenched in China. The governmentdoes not hesitate to use these resources if it sees the stakesas high enoughas evidenced by the centralization sur-veillance in the period leading up to the 2008 BeijingOlympics, as well as more recent attempts to suppressdissent by Uighur minorities.

Here, however, we style two possibilities, which we callsimply, deliberative authoritarianism and deliberation-led

democratization. These two possibilities focus on strat-egies of political conflict management and decision-making rather than patterns of economic ownership andinfluence or coercive state power. In the short term weexpect deliberative authoritarianism to prevail, though webelieve deliberation-led democratization is a longer-termpossibility.

The first possibility, deliberative authoritarianism,implies that deliberative influence can stabilize authori-tarian rule, which in turn is increasingly bounded insuch a way that it is compatible with processes that gen-erate deliberative influence.105 Under this scenario, author-itarian political resources are used to mobilize deliberativemechanisms. Deliberative influence is limited in scopeand agenda, and detached from political movements andindependent political organizations. Deliberative experi-ments are localized and well-managed so as to preventthem from expanding beyond particular policy areas, lev-els of government, or regions. Following this logic, ifdeliberation is successful at demobilizing and co-optingopposition while generating administrative capacity, thenit will enable the CCP to avoid regime-level democrati-zation. Under this scenario, authoritarian rule will con-tinue to transform in ways that channel and manage thepolitical demands generated by economic developmentin such a way that authoritarian rule is maintained andstrengthened. More specifically, we might expect the fol-lowing, all of which can be observed in China today.

Coercion is targeted and limited. While state power isstill ubiquitous, the way in which the power is exercised ismodified in ways that both enable and require deliberativeapproaches to political contestation. Under deliberativeauthoritarianism, the use of coercion continues to be tamedand regulated. Coercive force is carefully and selectivelyused to eliminate organized political dissidents,106 whilegovernance-related forms of conflict are channeled intodeliberative problem-solving venues.

Power is regularized through rights and deliberation.The CCP continues to incrementally grant rights to citi-zens including rights to own property, to consent to trans-fers, and to consent to public projects with individualimpacts; rights to elect local committees and officials, andto manage local funds; and certain welfare rights. Limitedrights of private association are institutionalized. Impor-tantly, China is likely to continue to incrementally butsystematically establish a judicial system that institution-alizes the rule of law, enabling these rights to have auton-omous effects.107

The CCP gives up some power as a political investmentits future. The CCP calculates that giving over somepowers to local and administrative processes will generatespecific policy- or problem-related solutions to problems,thus forming a piecemeal but resilient basis for its

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continued legitimacya process Pierre Rosanvallon hascalled destructive legitimation that can be more gener-ally observed in the governance strategies of complexsocieties.108 These local and segmented sites of legiti-macy shore up the global legitimacy of the party in theface of weaknesses of the official ideology, which in turnincreases its political capacities.

Under this scenario, then, the functional effectiveness ofauthoritarian deliberation substitutes for regime-leveldemocratization. The current nascent form of deliberativeauthoritarianism in China would evolve into a more con-sistent anddeveloped type of rule, underwhich cruder exer-cises of power are replaced with more limited, subtle, andeffective forms. Political legitimacy would be generated bydeliberative means, locale by locale, and policy by policy.The CCP continues to encourage local officials to developparticipatory and deliberative institutions to curb rampantcorruption, reduce coercion, andpromote reason-basedper-suasion. It invites ordinary citizens, experts, and think tanksto participate in decision-making processes. But ultimatecontrol over agendas as well as outcomes remains with theParty and beyond the reach of democratic processes. Ofcourse, this kind of softening, regularizing, and civilizingof power remains contingent on the wisdom of the CCPelites and local leaders, who must be sufficiently enlight-ened as to bemotivated by the legitimating effects of delib-eration. Where these conditions hold, however, it istheoretically possible for deliberative political processes tobecome an important ingredient in the reproduction andresilience of authoritarian rulea possibility that remainsunder-explored in the literatures on regime transitions aswell as the literature of deliberative democracy.

The Developmental Logic ofAuthoritarian Deliberation II:Deliberation-led DemocratizationDemocratic transitions from England in the eighteenthand nineteenth centuries to Spain in the 1970s have mostlybeen society-led, often conjoined withmarket-driven devel-opment. These transitions were liberal in the sense thatautonomous social forces propelled democratization. Thedemocratic transitions of the late 1970s and 1980s tendedto be driven by regime-level changes from authoritarian tomulti-party electoral rule, and accompanied by constitu-tional changes that institutionalized legislative power andjudicial independence, as well as the rights that securedsocial freedom and autonomy.The Polish Solidarity modelof democratic transition, for instance, involved a strongopposition from civil society that forced government tothe negotiating table.

Most students of China focus on democratizationthrough regime change from one-party rule to multi-party electoral democracy. Reforms below the regimelevelat the local level, in administrative and policy pro-cesses, and in the judiciaryare unlikely to lead to broader

democratization of the political system.109 Yet an increas-ing number of Chinese intellectuals see the developmentof deliberative processes within authoritarian institutionsas a pathway to democracy. Some hold that democratiza-tion could develop fromwithin one-party rule, if the kinds,level, and density of reforms alter its character in waysthat produce the functional effects of democracy.110 If thistrajectory were to materialize, it would be unique: we knowof no examples of regime democratization as a conse-quence of progressively institutionalized deliberation. Nor,indeed, is such a possibility conceptualized in the transi-tions literature.

But we can theorize the possibility. If authoritarian elitesincreasingly depend upon deliberation as a source of legit-imacy for their decisions, then it is also possible for thedemocratic empowerments to grow incrementally, drivenin part by the fact that deliberation provides legitimacyonly if has the space and inclusiveness to generate influ-ence.111 This kind of development would have the effectof layering new institutions over old ones for the purposeof enhancing their effectiveness, while also transformingtheir character in democratic directions.112 Deliberationmight then serve as a leading edge of democratization,possibly through the following mechanisms.

Deliberative legitimacy tends toward inclusion of allaffected. When other sources of legitimacy failideology,traditional deference, or economic benefitsdeliberationprovides a means of generating legitimacy. However, delib-eration generates legitimacy that is usable by the stateprimarily when those whose cooperation the state requireshave been included in the deliberations, either directly orthrough credible representation mechanisms, and partici-pants believe they have had influence or accept the legit-imacy of the process. Because the tactics of obstruction(both rights-based and protest-based) and exit are widelyavailable in China, elites have incentives to expand insti-tutions to include those affected by policies. For example,local officials in Wenling required each household to sendone family member to attend public hearings about landappropriation or house demolition.When this tactic failedto include all they believed to be affected, they resorted torandom selectionmethods to ensure wide representation.113

Experiences of consultative and deliberative engagementchange citizen expectations. Closely related, democraticinstitutions are easier for regimes to initiate than toretract.114 Once voice and rights are granted by the state,they become part of the culture of expectations, trans-forming supplicants into citizens, and making it difficultfor regimes to dial back democratic reforms.115 The partysecretary of Wenling City, for example, reported that heregularly receives complaints from peasants when localofficials make decisions without first holding deliberativemeetings. Officials in Zeguo, a township in Wenling,

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continue to repeat deliberative polling in part becausethey worry that not to do so would violate expectationscreated by earlier experiments. The anecdotal evidence isbacked by poll results which suggest that citizens of Zeguoexpect their government to conduct annual deliberativepolls on the budget, and trust them to do so. The meanresponse to the question Will the government take delib-erative polling seriously, on a 0 to 10 scale, where one isunlikely and 10 is the most likely was 7.55 in the2005 survey, but increased to 8.43 in the 2006 survey.With regard to the question Do you think the govern-ment will use the results of the Deliberative Democracymeeting, the mean score increased from 7.33 in 2005 to8.16 in 2006.116 Zegui officials are now working on aregularized annual procedure for budgeting through delib-erative polls.

Deliberation tends towards institutionalized decision-making procedures. When deliberation is regularized, ittends toward institutionalization. Institutionalization canbe driven by citizen expectations. But it can also be drivenby elite desires to retain control of political demand bychanneling into scope- and domain-specific venues. Thiskind of tendency is visible in the governments concernwith creating a non-arbitrary, constitutionally-regulatedjudicial system, the existence of which is a condition ofdemocratization.117 China seems to be changing, gradu-ally, from an instrumental rule by law to a normativerule of law which binds not only citizens but also gov-ernment officials.118 The institutionalization of decision-making procedures is also visible more directly; in 2004,for example, the government of Fujian Province issuedrequirements that each village hold at least four publicmeetings a year and detailed procedures for selectingparticipants and conducting the meetings, the role of chair-person, note-taking, and linking meetings with villagedecision-making processes.119 As early as 2002, WenlingCity ruled that townships must hold four democraticroundtables each year. In 2004, the city further specifiedthe procedures of these meetings, with the apparent aimof deepening their democratic credentials.120 In July 2008the State Council issued a national regulation requiring allcounty and city level governments to hold open publichearings when making major social policies. Importantly,the regulation specified procedures, apparently intendingto secure legal, scientific, and democratic legitimacy forthe hearings. In 2010 the State Council drafted threeNational Guidelines regulating public participation. Oneprovision requires parties to present the supporting argu-ment first, followed by all opposing arguments. Anotherprocedure focuses on encouraging and managing opendebates in public hearings. Interestingly, such provisionsreflect and institutionalize the principles of deliberativedemocracy, emphasizing equality, fairness, and opennessto public participation.121

The logic of deliberative inclusion leads to voting. Polit-ical elites in China often emphasize the relationship betweendeliberation and consensual decision-making, consistentwith authoritarian deliberation. However, when interestsconflict even after deliberation, elites may find that if theynonetheless claim, counterfactually, that their preferreddecisions are the result of consensus, they erode the legit-imacy of their decisions. It is increasingly common forofficials to respond to contentious deliberation by holdingvotes in public meetings, by submitting decisions to thecommunity through referendums, or by deferring to vot-ing by the deputies of local peoples congresses. More gen-erally, the notion that deliberation and voting shouldfunction together within political processes is now morecommon in China; of the 27 projects awarded nationalprizes for local political innovations with deliberative ele-ments between 2000 and 2005, ten involved various kindsof elections.122

While all of these processes can be described as CCPstrategies to co-opt opposition and expand state capaci-ties, each can also result in lasting democratic transforma-tions in the form of rule. As Tilly notes, trajectories ofregimes within a two-dimensional space defined by degreeof governmental capacity and extent of protected consul-tation significantly affect both their prospects for democ-racy and the character of their democracy if it arrives.123

ConclusionOur argument should not be taken as a prediction thatshould China democratize, it will be governance-drivenand deliberation-led. Instead, our argument is both moremodest and speculative. By conceptualizing authoritariandelibera

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