Closing Open Government: Grassroots Policy Conversion of China’s Open Government Information Regulation and Its Aftermath

Abstract

How and when do opportunities for political participation through courts change under authoritarianism? Although China is better known for tight political control than for political expression, the 2008 Open Government Information (OGI) regulation ushered in a surge of political-legal activism. We draw on an original dataset of 57,095 OGI lawsuits, supplemented by interview data and government documents, to show how a feedback loop between judges and court users shaped possibilities for political activism and complaint between 2008 and 2019. Existing work suggests that authoritarian leaders crack down on legal action when they feel politically threatened. In contrast, we find that courts minted, defined, and popularized new legal labels to cut off access to justice for the super-active litigants whose lawsuits had come to dominate the OGI docket. This study underscores the power of procedural rules and frontline judges in shaping possibilities for political participation under authoritarianism.

Government Trust, Environmental Pollution Perception, and Environmental Governance Satisfaction

“…This article explains from the angle of political contact and political interaction. From the perspective of the general public, it is precisely because of the close distance between township governments and individuals that individuals can interact with township government officials, express their interests, and share public goods from the environmental protection policies of grassroots governments [ 71 ]. At the same time, just because of the close distance between the people and the township government, the people can realize the effective interaction with the township government, and increase the understanding of the government.…”

Open government and citizen empowerment in authoritarian states

“…Hence, the literature has focused on how authoritarian regimes used new technologies, e-participation, and Lee & Kwak, 2012;Bates, 2013;and, Gil-Garcia et al, 2020. e-government, as tools to either promote economic development and modernization (Altayar, 2018;Linde & Karlsson, 2013), or to oppress, manipulate citizens, and legitimize autocracy (Gerschewski, 2013(Gerschewski, , 2018Guriev & Treisman, 2019;Kendall-Taylor et al, 2020;Kudaibergenova, 2018;Marechal, 2017;Omelicheva, 2016;O'Connor et al, 2019). As an example of the latter, open government can be used to legitimize autocratic regimes by allowing citizens to freely express their opinions about social problems and injustices on-line while at the same time violating the human rights of those who appear to threaten the regime, described as "networked authoritarianism" (Kim et al, 2021;Li et al, 2016;MacKinnon, 2011;Maerz, 2016Maerz, , 2020Pearse & Kendzior, 2012;Tsai, 2016).…”