The Debate on Party Legitimacy in China: a mixed quantitative/qualitative analysis

Abstract

We report results here from a mixed quantitative -qualitative analysis of 168 articles published in China on the question of regime and party legitimacy. We find that ideology remains a leading strategy of future legitimation for the CCP, alongside better known strategies of institution-building and social justice. We also find that liberalism, while less often proposed, remains a potent critique of regime legitimacy. We use these results to make predictions about the evolutionary path of institutional change of China's political system, linking up Chinese elite debate with the wider scholarly debate of authoritarian durability.

In Search of Legitimacy in Post-Revolutionary China: Bringing Ideology and Governance Back

“…Contrary to the proposition of an "end of ideology" which allegedly paralleled the collapse of the Soviet Union and the ensuing "end of history", the CCP has never discontinued its reliance on ideology as a crucial source of regime legitimacy (Chen 1995 also Gilley and Holbig 2009). However, the answer to these challenges has been to refurbish the old-fashioned image of Marxism and breathe new life into worn-out socialist tenets.…”

“…These scholars argued that party rule would come under growing pressure as the satisfaction of material needs would breed immaterial ones, such as demands for political participation and pluralization, and as social inequalities fuelled a sense of injustice (Gilley and Holbig 2009). …”

Remaking the ccp’s Ideology: Determinants, Progress, and Limits under Hu Jintao

“…Contrary to many Western commentators, who see China's successful economic performance as the most important if not the only source of regime legitimacy, Chinese party theorists and scholars have 2 Part of the evidence from Chinese elite debate used in this article was identified in an ongoing collaborative research project with Bruce Gilley, where we analysed approximately 200 Chinese articles published between 2000 and 2007 dealing with the issue of the CCP's political legitimacy; cf. Gilley and Holbig (2009). come to regard Deng Xiaoping's formula of performance-based legitimacy as increasingly fragile and precarious. As will be demonstrated below, in order to tackle the perceived "performance dilemma" of party rule, a majority has commended the adaptation and innovation of party ideology as the main resource for relegitimizing CCP rule.…”

Frames We Can Believe In: Official Framing and Ideology in the CCP’s Quest for Legitimacy

“…Despite the overall high level of political trust and popular support for the CCP-led political regime, since 2004 there has been a lively discussion in Chinese academic circles and among China's ruling elites about a pending legitimacy crisis (Gilley and Holbig 2009). Besides the external factors cited by party analysts -such as the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, the Guomindang's loss of power in Taiwan, and the pressures resulting from China's entry into the World Trade Organization -it has mainly been the fear that economic growth, the driving factor in regime legitimacy, will decline that has been worrying China's ruling elites.…”