This is a beautifully written book that advances a new framework on representation and the legislature in authoritarian regimes. Political scientists have long considered democratic elections to be the precondition for representation. But can meaningful representation arise in an authoritarian setting?

By examining the people’s congress system in China, Rory Truex provides a coherent analytical framework and convincing empirical evidence that representation does exist in an autocracy, but warns that the representation is “within bounds” (p. 6). Truex’s argument starts with the assumption that the autocrat has incomplete information about citizen preferences, and parliamentary representatives can help reduce information uncertainties by fostering the revelation of citizen grievances. The revelation, however, may engender unwanted citizen attention and possible collective action. To solve this “information-attention tradeoff” (p. 5), the autocrat engineers the ideal parliamentary representative who conveys citizen preferences only on nonpolitical issues but keeps quiet about citizen demands for sensitive issues (such as democratic reform). This behavioral pattern becomes a state of equilibrium because representatives have empathy with the citizens and meanwhile can benefit financially from having a parliamentary seat.

This framework (formalized in Chapter 2) generates important insights, which Truex then tests using a wide range of micro-level data. Chapter 3 uses a subset of opinions from Hainan’s Provincial People’s Congress to show that the opinions of deputies exert a real influence on policy outcomes. Survey results demonstrate that citizens are generally optimistic about the influence of deputies on many nonpolitical issues, but skeptical about its ability to have an effect on sensitive issues. Chapter 4 uses data on deputies’ backgrounds and behavior to show that their policy proposals reflect the concerns of their geographic constituents on a range of nonpolitical issues, but very few proposals directly challenge the regime’s core political interests. Chapter 5 studies the career paths of deputies and shows that they are rewarded for their representative activities, but punished if they transgress certain boundaries. Chapter 6 analyzes a subset of deputies who are business leaders and shows that a seat in the National People’s Congress can bring personal returns to their companies. Chapter 7 provides a brief history of the National People’s Congress and demonstrates that representation was strengthened in the face of revolutionary threat, such as during the Democracy Wall and Tiananmen Square movements of the 1980s. Chapter 8 then concludes by considering the framework’s generalizability to other authoritarian regimes, such as Vietnam and Cuba.

I want to highlight two contributions the book makes. The first contribution, a theoretical one, is that “representation within bounds” provides a new lens through which we should look at legislative institutions in authoritarian regimes. The nascent literature on authoritarian politics, reflected in the works of Lisa Blaydes, Jennifer Gandhi, Beatriz Magaloni, Edmund Malesky, and Milan Svolik, primarily examines these institutions as co-optation or power-sharing mechanisms. But as Truex shows, most deputies in China do not offer opinions in opposition to those of the regime (different from the co-optation view), and many deputies feel a sense of responsibility to serve their constituents and are less concerned about their factional interests (different from the power-sharing view). “Representation within bounds,” therefore, better explains these observational anomalies, at least in the Chinese case.

The second contribution, an empirical one, is that the book differs from many of the aforementioned influential works by offering a micro-level examination of deputy behavior and opinions. Some of the leading studies in this camp examine cross-national variations in political institutions and autocratic survival. Truex instead draws on micro-level evidence, following a great tradition in the study of the Chinese legislature contributed by Young Nam Cho, Kevin O’Brien, Melanie Manion, and Murray Scot Tanner, which provides a more vivid picture of how representation actually works in an authoritarian regime. I also want to applaud the quality and triangulation of different types of evidence. The utilization of large-n data sets on deputy backgrounds, legislative behaviors, career outcomes, and financial connections, as well as surveys of netizens and primary legislative documents, supplemented by the author’s interviews with deputies, citizens, financial experts, and political insiders, not only reveals the general patterns of institutional dynamics but also helps the reader make sense of the quantitative findings and sort out different mechanisms.

Making Autocracy Work is also laudable for its style. The narrative at the beginning of each chapter immediately captivates the reader. Every chapter ends with a section on “Limitations and Alternative Perspectives,” which provides great transparency and introduces competing explanations.

The book also raises some interesting questions about the National People’s Congress and authoritarian institutions. If the autocrat’s objective is to stay in power (p. 5), we should expect the autocrat to be most interested in information on citizen grievances over politically sensitive issues. The regime should want to know what problems would ignite a revolution. So it is puzzling that the autocrat wants to hear deputy opinions only on nonpolitical issues. While deputy action on these sensitive issues could raise citizen attention, with agenda-setting power the autocrat can easily manipulate the publicity of these sensitive discussions to avoid a social backfire. This also calls into question some of the evidence, which relies primarily on disclosed documents (p. 99), reflecting a common challenge in studying authoritarian politics where scholars can see only what the autocrat wants us to see. Similarly, if survey evidence suggests that citizens are skeptical about deputies’ ability to bring about political issues (p. 73), we should cast doubt on the broad conclusion that “representation with bounds” can enhance regime stability. The establishment and early development of the National People’s Congress (Chapter 7) seem to be consistent with the co-optation or power-sharing view, which suggests that the Chinese Communist Party still needed to seek cooperation from other political forces, including several democratic parties, in the early stage of the regime.

These minor imperfections should not overshadow the profound theoretical insights and rigorous empirical findings that the book brings. Making Autocracy Work should be on the reading list of everyone interested in authoritarian institutions or Chinese politics.