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Participatory authoritarianism: From bureaucratic transformation to civic participation in Russia and China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2020

Catherine Owen Open the ORCID record for Catherine Owen [Opens in a new window]
Catherine Owen*
Affiliation:
Department of Politics, University of Exeter
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article explores the way in which Russian and Chinese governments have rearticulated global trends towards active citizenship and participatory governance, and integrated them into pre-existing illiberal political traditions. The concept of ‘participatory authoritarianism’ is proposed in order to capture the resulting practices of local governance that, on the one hand enable citizens to engage directly with local officials in the policy process, but limit, direct, and control civic participation on the other. The article explores the emergence of discourses of active citizenship at the national level and the accompanying legislative development of government-organised participatory mechanisms, demonstrating how the twin logics of openness and control, pluralism and monism, are built into their rationale and implementation. It argues that as state bureaucracies have integrated into international financial markets, so new participatory mechanisms have become more important for local governance as government agencies have lost the monopoly of information for effective policymaking. Practices of participatory authoritarianism enable governments to implement public sector reform while directing increased civic agency into non-threatening channels.

Keywords

AuthoritarianismParticipationRussiaChinaGood GovernancePublic Sector Reform
Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 46 , Issue 4 , October 2020 , pp. 415 - 434
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the British International Studies Association

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References

1 In the context of local governance, I refer to democratic practices as those that promote pluralism and authoritarian practices as those that stifle it, or promote monism. However, although participation suggests a growing plurality of voices in governance, my research shows that participatory practices are not always democratic, because these voices may be restricted or undermined. This is the contradiction at the heart of ‘participatory authoritarianism’.

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114 Duckett and Wang, ‘Extending political participation in China’.

115 Due to the difficulty of observing these practices, especially as an outsider, I rely on the experience of current and former members of participatory bodies described to me in interviews.

116 Owen, ‘“Consentful contention” in a corporate state’.

117 Interview with public chamber member, Samara, 31 October 2012.

118 Interview with city infrastructure activist, St Petersburg, 22 May 2018; interview with recycling activist, St Petersburg, 8 June 2018.

119 Interview with participatory budgeting participant, St Petersburg, 16 September 2019; Interview with public council member, St Petersburg, 13 July 2012; Interview with public council member, St Petersburg, 21 August 2012.

120 Interview with scholar, Shanghai, 1 March 2019. Deliberative polling, whereby a randomly selected (hence free of government influence) population is invited to debate policy, has been implemented in a few municipalities. See Fishkin, James, James, He, Baogang, Luskin, Robert, and Siu, Alice, ‘Deliberative democracy in an unlikely place: Deliberative polling in China’, British Journal of Political Science, 40:2 (2010), pp. 1–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

121 Interview with public council member, Samara, 2 November 2012; interview with former public council member, Samara, 1 November 2012; interview with scholar, Hangzhou, 13 March 2019.

122 Qin, Xuan and He, Baogang, ‘Deliberation, demobilization, and limited empowerment: A survey study on participatory pricing in China’, Japanese Journal of Political Science, 19:4 (2018), pp. 694–708CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

123 Interview with scholar, Hangzhou, 13 March 2019.

124 Interview with participatory budgeting participant, St Petersburg, 16 September 2019; interview with scholar, Hanghzou, 14 March 2019.

125 Interview with public council member 1, Moscow, 6 November 2012; interview with public council member 2, Moscow, 9 November 2012.

126 Owen, ‘“Consentful contention” in a corporate state’; Distelhorst, Greg, ‘The power of empty promises: Quasi-democratic institutions and activism in China’, Comparative Political Studies, 50:4 (2017), pp. 464–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

127 Interview with public council member, Samara, 14 August 2012.

128 Yang, Qing and Tang, Wenfang, ‘Exploring sources of institutional trust in China: Culture, mobilization, or performance?’, Asian Politics and Society, 2:3 (2010), pp. 415–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

129 Schlapentokh, Vladimir, ‘Trust in public institutions in Russia: The lowest in the world’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 39:2 (2006), pp. 153–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

130 Interview with participant in residents’ committees’ activities 1, Shanghai, 5 June 2019; interview with participant in residents’ committees’ activities 2, Shanghai, 5 June 2019.

131 Interview with participatory budgeting participant, St Petersburg, 10 May 2019.

132 Tomba, Luigi, The Government Next Door: Neighborhood Politics in Urban China (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014)Google Scholar; interview with community organisation member, Shanghai, 14 June 2019; interview with residents’ committee member, Shanghai, 28 May 2019.

133 Interview with official, St Petersburg, 8 May 2019.

134 Dean, Mitchell, Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society (London: Sage, 1999), p. 155Google Scholar.

135 Agnew, John, ‘The territorial trap: The geographical assumptions of International Relations theory’, Review of International Political Economy, 1:1 (1994), pp. 53–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

136 Bruff, Ian, ‘The rise of authoritarian neoliberalism’, Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Culture, Economics and Society, 26:1 (2014), pp. 113–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bruff, Ian and Tansel, Cemal Burak, ‘Authoritarian neoliberalism: Trajectories of knowledge production and praxis’, Globalizations, 16:3 (2019), pp. 233–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.