Relatively few studies of local governance in authoritarian contexts seek to develop a theory with potential applications beyond the site of study, in part because of the prevailing belief that local politics are irrelevant to the overall durability of authoritarian regimes. Challenging this view, Daniel C. Mattingly shows how the presence of strong civil society organizations in autocracies—and perhaps beyond—does not always indicate a broader shift toward democratic governance; on the contrary, his research explores the ways in which nonstate groups and their leaders are recruited by local officials to assist in the imposition of unpopular policies on citizens. This leads to the counterintuitive conclusion that communities with strong social institutions are more likely to suffer from the imposition of unpopular policies, whereas those with fragmented and disconnected social institutions may be better placed to resist them, because they are at lower risk of manipulation by the state. These findings raise a challenge to the seminal works on associational life from Tocqueville to Putnam, which argue that civic groups create forms of social capital that underpin the democratization process.

To demonstrate this conclusion, Mattingly lays out the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “governance challenge” in rural areas: local officials must implement highly interventionist and generally unpopular policies while maintaining a stable and protest-free environment, yet citizens do not trust CCP representatives and are unlikely to vote for them in local elections. To overcome this challenge, officials engage in practices of “informal control,” whereby they “exploit the social bonds created by strong civil society groups to collect information on individual behaviour and to apply social pressure on individuals to comply with the state” (p. 11). This exploitation occurs in three ways: by cultivating civil society groups that can advance the state’s agenda on its behalf, by co-opting influential civil society leaders into local political institutions in order to use their moral authority to influence society, and by creating small cells of informants able to infiltrate civic groups and report back on instances of noncompliance. Although democrats and civil society promoters will undoubtedly find this a bleak picture of associational life in authoritarian conditions, Mattingly is careful to state that civil society organizations are not solely used for political control by the authoritarian state; rather, “they can strengthen social trust in ways that facilitate collective action and help autocratic regimes infiltrate and control society” (emphasis in original). However, of these two functions, “their more significant role in autocracies like China is top-down political control” (p. 19).

Mattingly demonstrates his theory of informal control through an exploration of two particularly interventionist policy areas: the requisitioning of land from village farmers and the enforcement of the One Child Policy. Land requisitioning has mushroomed since the turn of the millennium, as China’s urbanization project has accelerated, with local officials acting as key brokers between poor farmers and developers while often providing low levels of compensation. Successful implementation of the One Child Policy, although varying in practice across provinces, has been deeply unpopular among citizens but is closely tied to the career paths of local officials. Taking a wide definition of civil society, Mattingly focuses on two groups commonly found in rural areas that form part of what Mary Gallagher has termed “unofficial civil society” (p. 7): lineage organizations and folk religious organizations. The former are extended kinship groups that trace family trees from a common ancestor and engage in ritualized ancestor worship, whereas the latter perpetuate local religious culture. The two groups do not have identical effects on policy implementation: whereas leaders of local lineage groups are often closely tied to local politics, this is less likely to be the case with folk religious leaders, given the proscription of religious activity during the Maoist period.

The book is accessibly written and carefully structured, with original empirical analysis spanning three chapters, each with a focus on one of the theoretical elements of informal control: cultivation, co-optation, and infiltration. Of particular merit is the skillful combination of qualitative and quantitative materials within each chapter. Sensitive, ethnographic fieldwork pairs two villages with contrasting levels of linkages between social organizations and the local authorities and, consequently, differing rates of land acquisitions and fulfillment of birth quotas. Quantitative data consisting of original field experiments and regression analyses of existing datasets then examine the extent to which the conclusions drawn from the qualitative material can be generalized across the rest of China.

The research presented here provides further ammunition with which to challenge the persistent view that the presence of civic organizations is a sign of democratization. Even the presence of local elections should not be taken as evidence of a functioning local democracy, because voters are more likely to select members of their chosen informal group than members of particular political parties; Mattingly states, “Elections are an effective way to determine which villagers have the most social authority and therefore help local officials project state power” (p. 67). These conclusions are not in themselves new—they were articulated by the early critics of the transition paradigm in the 1990s, who showed how institutions that appear “democratic” through a Western lens may take on very different meanings in different political and cultural contexts. The novelty of the present research lies in its lucid exposition of the specific ways in which these different meanings are forged and operationalized in the service of authoritarian governance. It explains why we see growing numbers of civic organizations while also seeing greater levels of authoritarian control.

Throughout the book, Mattingly raises the question of the generalizability of the theory of informal control beyond rural China. Two interesting avenues for further research stand out in this regard. First, given that lineage and folk religious organizations are far less prevalent in cities and that land appropriation is less relevant for the majority of city dwellers, a demonstration of the theory in urban China necessitates a follow-up study focusing on different organizations and policy spheres. One wonders whether other nonstate groups suffer from the same tripartite strategy of manipulation as they try to implement different types of policy. Second, Mattingly presents brief examples of similar practices in both democracies and nondemocracies, including the United States, Scotland, Venezuela, and India during the Middle Ages, raising the question of whether the theory can extend beyond authoritarian regimes. But there are qualitative differences in the way in which civic organizations interact with the state in democracies and nondemocracies; hence a deeper elaboration of informal control within types of authoritarian regimes would be required before exploring its iteration in democracies.

The wealth of new data presented in the book will be of great value to students of associational life and local politics in rural China. But the theory of informal control also raises an important question for promoters of civil society around the world: Should they pack up and go home, because their activities risk having the reverse effect to the one they intend? Clearly, this would be a win for authoritarian leaders, who have criticized Western support for nongovernmental groups since the Color Revolutions swept Eurasia during the early 2000s. We are left with the conclusion that authoritarian governance is far more robust and adaptable than previously thought and, perhaps, ultimately undefeatable.