Abstract
Civil society organizations are commonly characterized as a force opposing and potentially threatening authoritarian regimes. Why, then, has the Chinese state allowed the formation of a sprawling civil society within its territory? In Civil Society under Authoritarianism: The China Model, Jessica C. Teets offers new insights into this puzzling phenomenon by exploring the process of learning between local state actors and civil society organizations. In the course of the analysis, she convincingly details the relationship between these two actors as having been transformed from corporatism into what she terms ‘consultative authoritarianism’: a social management system whereby state actors both encourage and undermine civil society roles through mostly non-repressive means, while civil society actors are afforded enough space to actively improve governance and aid in the delivery of social services (p. 142).
Teets’s research takes the form of a comparative case study in which she analyses the changing local state–civil society relationship by treating registration requirements, access to funding sources and the regulatory incentive structure as indicators of operational autonomy (p. 26). Resting on the rich interview data harvested from more than 150 local government officials, grass-roots group leaders and INGO project leaders between 2006 and 2011, as well as discussions with scholars from China’s foremost research centres on civil society issues, the sound construction of the author’s research design provides fertile ground for the analysis of the four provincial/regional cases in Beijing, Yunnan, Sichuan and Jiangsu.
According to the author’s argument, the central leadership’s fiscal decentralization efforts from the 1980s onwards led to mounting pressures on local state actors to deliver social services to the Chinese population without a transfer of the necessary taxing autonomy to meet these new mandates. Further challenged by having to ensure social stability and sound budgets under the Target Management Responsibility System in order to enhance their chances of promotion, local state actors were incentivized to look for innovative ways – both within their areas of governance and beyond – to deal with these issues. In this difficult political economy of local social service provision, civil society actors increasingly promised to provide both alleviation of administrative concerns as well as a feedback channel for concerns of the populace otherwise often absent in non-democratic regimes. As a result, local officials engaged their civil society counterparts, learned of their benefits through direct experience and observations of state–society relations in other provinces and states, and found an unexpected ally. Civil society actors, despite an obvious power asymmetry, were in turn offered access to the policymaking process and thus enabled to accomplish their goals of advocacy, open up channels of representation, and aid in improving governance.
While the book’s strengths far outweigh its weaknesses, I do take issue with the author’s observation of a spread of consultative authoritarianism throughout the non-democratic world in the final chapter. Specifically focusing on the Russian case of ‘sovereign democracy’, she presents various pieces of anecdotal evidence for what she calls an ‘illiberal wave of consultative authoritarianism’ (pp. 207–8). This discussion would have gained in argumentative strength had it either been constructed as a comparison between China and Russia, or given the space of an entire book. Nonetheless, and despite the final chapter being rather thin as it stands, the author demonstrates a thorough understanding of the international diffusion of authoritarian norms and policy – in fact, should the author ever decide to publish a volume on the topic (which I both hope and expect), I would surely be among the readers.
While certainly controversial to some, Teets has written an excellent book. The methodology is sound and particularly benefits from her impressive access to local state officials; the case studies are rich in descriptive details, and the conclusions are well substantiated. Yet the strongest asset of the book lies in the nuanced lessons she draws from her research, and the manifold ways she thus contributes to scholarly debates on governance under authoritarian regimes, international engagement with China, and development initiatives. Nowhere has it been more clearly articulated that a civil society’s role may not necessarily lie in overthrowing authoritarian regimes, but in effectively improving the living conditions of a population under authoritarian rule (pp. 4–5, 211–12). While the author herself concedes that consultative authoritarianism has made authoritarian regimes more durable, she nonetheless presents compelling evidence that good governance and institutionalized feedback mechanisms created by a coalition of state actors and civil society organizations do have their rightful place in authoritarian regimes, and should not be instantly dismissed as successful co-optation of political capital by a regime. I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone seeking to obtain a better understanding of China, authoritarianism or questions of governance – be they students, journalists or academics.