Challenging, complementing or assuming ‘the Mandate of Heaven’? Political distrust and the rise of self-governing social organizations in rural China

Pesqué‐Cela, Vanesa; Tao, Ran; Liu, Yongdong; Sun, Lei

doi:10.1016/j.jce.2008.08.004

Cited by 23 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…This model has informed a dominant "confrontational" thesis in the analysis of state-"civil society" relations in post-reform China, whereby citizens" autonomous associations and other social organisations are frequently represented as oppositional to an "authoritarian" and "repressive" state (cf. Pesque-Cela, et al 2009;Spires 2011). This construction applied to China as well as to many other non-Western development contexts, however is criticised by Hann (1996: 1) as "predicated on fundamental ethnocentricity", by which he meant the assumed universality of the Western notion of liberal-individualism underpinning the whole idea of "civil society".…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Working with the homeless: The case of a non-profit organisation in Shanghai

Zhang

McWhinney

2012

Local Economy

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This paper addresses a two-pronged objective, namely to bring to the fore a much neglected social issue of homelessness, and to explore the dynamics of state-society relations in contemporary China, through a case study of an NPO working with the homeless in Shanghai. It shows that the largely invisible homelessness in Chinese cities was substantially due to exclusionary institutions, such as the combined household registration and "detention and deportation" systems. Official policy has become much more supportive since 2003 when the latter was replaced with government-run shelters, but we argue that the NPO case demonstrates the potential for enhanced longer-term support and enabling active citizenship for homeless people. By analysing the ways in which the NPO offers services through collaboration and partnership with the public (and private) actors, we also argue that the transformations in post-reform China and the changes within the state and civil society have significantly blurred their boundaries, rendering state-society relations much more complex, dynamic, fluid, and mutually embedded.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Working with the homeless: The case of a non-profit organisation in Shanghai

Zhang

McWhinney

2012

Local Economy

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“…This mechanism is actually an “extra-legislative activity of pork-barrel politics” (Manion, 2014). Pesqué-Cela et al (2009) also find that self-governing organizations do exist, and are more likely to exist, where the people have less political trust in local governments.…”

Section: The Party Chief and Mayor Templatementioning

confidence: 97%

Horizontal “checks and balances” in the socialist regime: the party chief and mayor template

Zhou

2018

Journal of Institutional Economics

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János Kornai's pioneering scholarship examined the mechanisms of the socialist system. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Kornai's main focus was on the transition process in former socialist countries in central Eastern Europe. This paper builds on Kornai's work on the socialist system by analyzing horizontal bargaining within every political branch in contemporary China. I argue that this horizontal bargaining within the party is enhanced by the vertical bargaining. Incorporating Kornai's work on socialism, the “party chief and mayor” template extends the bargaining model from one key figure and one group in the “king and council” template to two key figures and their respective confidants. In addition, it incorporates institutional constraints into the graphical model. It also defines a “collective decision probability function,” which shows how the party chief and mayor model reaches “checks and balances” that limit the policy space, regardless of whether the policy is exogenous or endogenous.

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“…The state has encouraged the development of civic associations to promote interaction between government and societal forces and to take over the state's responsibility in service provision (Howell 2007). Over the past several decades, civic associations have grown substantially, giving rise to a diverse organizational sphere reflecting complex forms of state-society relations (Saich 2000;Zhang and Baum 2004;Weller 2005;Pesqué-Cela et al 2009).…”

Section: The Organizational Spherementioning

confidence: 99%

“…They range from state corporatist entities to autonomous civil society groups, with semi-integrated semi-autonomous organizations in between. We compare two types of organizations that display marked differences in external structure but are embedded in strong horizontal linkages: traditional informal lineage groups (Tsai 2007) and semi-autonomous civic associations as exemplified by seniors associations (Pesqué-Cela et al 2009). We examine both the occurrence and success 2 (conditional on occurrence) of collective action using quantitative data from a longitudinal survey of rural China, supplemented with qualitative in-depth interviews.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Organizational Structure and Collective Action: Lineage Networks, Semiautonomous Civic Associations, and Collective Resistance in Rural China

Tao

2017

American Journal of Sociology

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Existing research on the relationship between organizations and social movements typically focuses on organizations' internal structure and explains the emergence and outcome of movements in separate frameworks. The literature also highlights a lack of organizational basis for collective action in non-democratic regimes. To bridge these gaps, the present study examines the distinct roles played by different organizations (embedded in distinct external structures reflecting state-society relations) in different stages of collective action (occurrence and success) in rural China. Using both quantitative and qualitative data, we study two types of organizations-first, informal lineage groups and second, semi-autonomous civic associations, exemplified by seniors associations. The results demonstrate that lineage groups serve as important mobilizing structures for collective resistance, but face limited success given their informal status and weak vertical linkages with the state. By contrast, seniors associations, which maintain close relations with authorities while conserving a high degree of autonomy, act as a genuine intermediary between government and aggrieved citizens, thus largely suppressing the occurrence of collective resistance. When collective action emerges, however, the associations can build on their legitimacy and vertical linkages to facilitate effective action. The findings provide a more nuanced understanding of the dynamics of contention in a non-democratic setting and the disparate roles different social organizations play in the process.

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Challenging, complementing or assuming ‘the Mandate of Heaven’? Political distrust and the rise of self-governing social organizations in rural China

Cited by 23 publications

References 41 publications

Working with the homeless: The case of a non-profit organisation in Shanghai

Working with the homeless: The case of a non-profit organisation in Shanghai

Horizontal “checks and balances” in the socialist regime: the party chief and mayor template

Organizational Structure and Collective Action: Lineage Networks, Semiautonomous Civic Associations, and Collective Resistance in Rural China

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