Introduction
In Western contexts, neighborhood homeowner associations (HOAs) are often dismissed on the grounds that they are merely concerned with property maintenance and other petty matters. Yet in China (and arguably elsewhere), these organizations are far more than just janitors. They are sites of negotiation, contestation, and political experimentation where citizens organize themselves and engage with authority at the most local level.
It is from this vantage point that Shitong Qiao’s new book, The Authoritarian Commons: Neighborhood Democratization in Urban China, makes a distinctive contribution. The book adds to the literature on private governance, civic participation, and state-society relations in contemporary China. To paraphrase Durkheim, the practices embedded in these HOAs are “social life consolidated” (Durkheim Reference Durkheim1982, 82), offering Qiao an opportunity to study how social life takes shape under authoritarian conditions. His central concept of “neighborhood democratization” captures how ordinary residents engage in forms of participation and self-management that coexist uneasily with the state’s control. In this sense, Qiao’s analysis also evokes a Tocquevillian insight: that local associations, even in constrained political environments, can serve as seedbeds of civic participation and democratic practice. Yet unlike Tocqueville’s voluntary associations in nineteenth-century America, these Chinese HOAs operate under the shadow of state supervision, revealing how such seedbeds can emerge within rather than beyond authoritarian rule.
The book situates HOAs within major scholarly debates. It contributes to the governance of the commons by examining how residents collectively manage shared spaces and resources within tight regulatory constraints. It enriches theories of authoritarian governance by revealing how regimes maintain legitimacy not only through repression but also through the selective empowerment of civic actors. It speaks to the legal foundations of property rights, showing how ownership, regulation, and participation intertwine in urban China. Finally, it engages with the possibilities of democratization in non liberal settings, illustrating how participatory practices can emerge within, rather than in opposition to, authoritarian structures.
In doing so, The Authoritarian Commons goes beyond narrow legal or sociological description to offer a strong theoretical contribution. Shitong Qiao explains how these organizations emerge, how they differ across three major Chinese cities (Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen), and—most interestingly—what they reveal about the strategies of an authoritarian state facing pressures from below.
This review essay has two main objectives: First, it offers a brief overview of the book’s argument and structure. Second, it engages with Shitong Qiao’s framework by proposing two possible extensions of his argument, namely that (1) the dynamics he identifies may also appear in non authoritarian regimes and (2) authoritarian systems might, in some cases, be more inclined to support private governance structures than democracies.
THE THREATS AND CAPACITIES OF CHINESE HOAS
The Authoritarian Commons makes two overarching arguments: although they each have distinct empirical foundations, they are united by a common intellectual project.
Two Variations on a Common Theme
The first argument builds upon a comparative analysis of the development of homeowner associations in three of China’s major cities: Beijing, Shenzhen, and Shanghai. Although these cities have much in common—they are all major urban centers, engines of China’s economic transformation, and spaces of rapid urbanization—the trajectory of homeowner associations within them differs markedly.
Shitong Qiao describes Beijing as a place marked by a high state concern for political stability. Authorities view any form of civic mobilization through a security lens, which leads to tight restrictions on HOAs. As a consequence, their autonomy is curtailed, leaving them with a minimal ability to operate as genuine civic actors.
Shanghai, by contrast, is a city with highly capable municipal governance. Here, the city government plays an active coordinating role in neighborhood governance and has built institutional infrastructure supporting homeowner associations. This makes homeowner associations important actors in local self-governance rather than politically marginal ones.
In Shenzhen, a rapidly growing city with weaker bureaucratic traditions and lower state capacity, the government has been less able to consistently manage urban neighborhoods. This has created greater demand for homeowner associations to emerge and, at times, to play a limited role in local governance. The result is an uneven and fragmented associational landscape..
Rooted in these three case studies, Shitong Qiao’s overarching argument rests on two variables: (1) the perceived threat posed by HOAs to social stability and (2) the capacity of local state governance. Where the threat posed by HOAs is perceived to be high, their autonomy tends to be challenged, and where state capacity is strong, HOAs tend to be unnecessary. However, in places where both the perceived threat and state capacity are moderate, an opportunity space opens for civic organization. This framework is both elegant and empirically grounded, offering a persuasive model for explaining local variation in China’s governance.
The Paradox of Authoritarian States
The second argument moves from local comparison to broad theoretical inquiry. Here, Shitong Qiao deploys large-scale survey data to address the following puzzle: How do authoritarian regimes relate to self-governed civic associations? Conventional wisdom suggests that such regimes view private orders with suspicion, since they could serve as bases for dissent. And indeed, history is replete with examples of authoritarian states repressing civil society.
Yet Shitong Qiao argues that this story is incomplete, if not wholly inaccurate. Authoritarian states also face governance challenges. They lack the infrastructure to manage every aspect of daily life, especially in urban neighborhoods. Civic associations, if properly managed and coopted, can ease this burden by providing services, maintaining order, and creating a sense of legitimacy at the grassroots level.
The result is a paradox. On the one hand, authoritarian states fear intermediary institutions; on the other hand, they find them useful. Shitong’s conclusion—that authoritarian regimes may deliberately encourage certain civic associations to bolster legitimacy—is both persuasive and innovative. It reframes authoritarian resilience not as simple repression, but as a dynamic process of selective empowerment and cooptation.
PRIVATE AND PUBLIC ORDER: WHICH COMES FIRST?
The Authoritarian Commons is not only insightful but also foundational, eliciting further questions and comparative reflection. In this section, I offer three potential extensions of its arguments.
Varieties of Regimes Rely on Private Governance
First, Shitong Qiao frames his analysis in terms of authoritarian strategies. My own research on a local fishers’ organization (Prud’homie de pêche) in Marseille is entirely consistent with this framing, as it suggests that similar dynamics existed under authoritarian regimes in France. For instance, the Prud’homie de pêche enjoyed particular autonomy in pre revolutionary France and under Napoleonic rule. However, the Prud’homie de pêche continued to enjoy state support under Republican regimes (albeit with some nuances described below).
This suggests a broader theoretical claim, which is entirely compatible with Shitong Qiao’s argument—namely that private governance arrangements interact with state authority across regime types, and not only under authoritarian ones. The dynamics of suspicion and reliance are not peculiar to autocracies. Democratic states, too, sometimes encourage civic institutions when useful and repress them when they pose a threat.
Thus, Shitong Qiao’s framework may be generalized: The state’s relationship with civic associations is always ambivalent, oscillating between fear and utility, across political regimes.
Greater Authoritarian than Democratic Reliance on Private Governance?
A second extension of the book’s argument is that authoritarian regimes may, in some respects, be more inclined to support private governance than democratic ones. In Marseille, support for the fishers’ organization waned as France democratized. Why? Under a monarchy or empire, concentrated power made it easier for local fishers to negotiate with rulers (for example, by lavishing the king and other grandees with gifts). By dispersing authority across institutions, democracies can make lobbying harder and less predictable.
Moreover, the need for legitimacy differs across various regimes. Democracies derive legitimacy from elections, while autocracies, which lack this, may seek to obtain it through the cooptation of grassroots institutions. Napoleon himself once praised the Prud’homie de pêche as “true watchdogs who cost nothing [to the state]” (Grisel Reference Grisel2021, 111). Authoritarian rulers may value such organizations precisely because they provide legitimacy and order at low cost.
This certainly does not mean that authoritarianism is “better” for civic life, but it does highlight an underexplored comparative question: Do autocracies sometimes create more institutional space for localized private governance than democracies?
State Dependence or Interdependence?
A third extension concerns the focus on state powers as a key explanatory variable for the success of private organizations. This is what I call elsewhere the “state dependence thesis,” which traverses the scholarship on private governance and private orders (Grisel Reference Grisel2021, 111–136). According to this thesis, the regulatory capacities of private orders are a bell-curved function of state support, meaning that while state power plays a key role in supporting the early development of private governance, it threatens this development when it exceeds a certain threshold.
The popularity of this thesis, which is understandable considering the prominence of the state in modern polities, should not obscure the fact that private organizations are more powerful than is usually assumed, even when state powers are significant (as illustrated by The Authoritarian Commons).
In order to make sense of this paradox, one could shift the focus from the state to the private orders themselves, so as to better understand their capacity to thrive in seemingly hostile contexts. In particular, the capacity of private orders to build interdependent relations with external polities might explain this paradox.
The case study of the Prud’homie de pêche shows that, although this organization always maintained relatively strong relations with local and central state authorities, it was unable to build similar ties with the European Union. Despite the many weaknesses of the European Union as a political entity, it is distant and hard to fathom for local fishers. Similarly, the powers of the Prud’homie de pêche are hard to understand for EU officials. The result is a complete lack of dialogue, resulting in a regulatory agenda that threatens the autonomy of the Prud’homie. In other words, the autonomy of private orders could also depend on their capacity to establish meaningful dialogues with external polities.
BEYOND CHINA
Shitong Qiao’s book is an impressive work of scholarship. It takes an organization that is often ignored—Chinese homeowner associations—and reveals its importance for the study of governance, legitimacy, and democratization. Its dual structure, combining detailed city-level comparison with broad theoretical analysis, demonstrates both empirical rigor and conceptual ambition.
One might regret the lack of engagement with a cultural approach that would differentiate the three cities at the heart of the study—Beijing, Shenzhen, and Shanghai—in light of local urban specificities. For instance, one could argue that local cultural conditions, shaped by each city’s political and economic trajectory, influence their propensity for HOAs. Shitong Qiao downplays what he calls the “problem with culture” in a way that reminds the reader of Oliver Williamson’s critique of trust (Williamson Reference Williamson1993). He argues that a “culture of private governance” lacks independence as an explanatory variable, as it ultimately correlates with his two other variables (p. 31). This approach rests on the assumption that private governance is closely associated with the development of the state (Qiao Reference Qiao2025, 31), an assumption that I refer to as the “state dependence thesis.”
Notwithstanding this, the book’s insights are likely to resonate beyond China. They invite us to analyze how states, whether authoritarian or democratic, engage with civic associations, while also leading us to reflect on the conditions under which private governance emerges, how it interacts with state authority, and what it means for democratization.
In short, The Authoritarian Commons is not only a book about Chinese neighborhoods. It is a book about the relationship between citizens and the state, about the forms of governance that emerge at the grassroots level, and about the paradoxes of power in all political systems.
Shitong Qiao has produced a work that will inspire comparative inquiry in the future. Anyone interested in China, governance, or democratization will benefit from engaging with it.
