Abstract
Rapid economic development has increased mass political participation in market reform China. Many electoral authoritarian regimes with a good record of economic development have experienced the growing participation of elite/middle-class citizens. Under the Chinese Communist Party regime, however, the poor mass is the main group to participate drastically more. This is because despite rapid aggregate growth, the mass have suffered extensively from excessive exploitation with high levels of corruption and inequality, which benefits many local elites. The regime has evaded authoritarian election but channeled such mounting participatory demands into an extensive petition (Xinfang) institution nationwide. As a result, the mass petition activism has rapidly increased since the early 1990s. This article finds the specific determinants of such petition activism with newly assembled data on provincial petition frequency and multiple case studies.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 99-120 |
| Number of pages | 22 |
| Journal | International Political Science Review |
| Volume | 33 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2012 Jan |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:The author thanks Richard Baum, Daniel A. Bell, Yongshun Cai, Yunhan Chu, Jae Ho Chung, Yousun Chung, Cari Coe, John Compton, Edward Friedman, Barbara Geddes, Chaibong Hahm, Kyungjoon Han, Lu Jie Devin Joshi, Julia Kim, Linda Li, Lianjiang Li, Peng Fan, Michael Ross, Florence So, Dane Swango, Hiroki Takeuchi, James Tong, Stan Wong, Vivian Zhan, Yongle Zhang, Xin Zhang, Eric Zusman, and the anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions. The work was supported by the National Foundation of Korea by the Korean Government (MEST) (NRF-2007-361-AL0014).
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Sociology and Political Science
- Political Science and International Relations
