1. Introduction
The concepts of deliberative democracy and practices of consultative politics have played distinctive roles in Chinese politics. Deliberation and consultative practices reflect the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP's) ‘Mass Line’ tradition which emphasizes the function of gathering ideas and concerns from the people and making decisions based on these. In recent years, in addition to the growing influence of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) on policy making (Yan, Reference Yan2011), the Party-state has endorsed deliberative democracy as a distinct form of democracy that is relevant to the country's experience (Xinhua, 2008), and to ‘strengthen socialist consultative democracy’ under Xi's administrationFootnote 1. In 2011 Baogang He and Mark Warren introduced the concept of ‘authoritarian deliberation’ (He and Warren, Reference He and Warren2011) which argues democratic deliberation can take place and even be promoted in an authoritarian state as an effective local governance strategy, despite its one-party rule and resistance to regime-level democratization. In ‘deliberative authoritarianism’, they argue, political elites ‘respond to persuasive influences, generated either among participants, or in the form of arguments made by participants to decision-makers’ (He and Warren, Reference He and Warren2011: 274).
Authoritarian deliberation, especially in the context of contemporary China, has been contested and supported by the Party-state's incentive to secure political legitimacy and the local government's practical needs to maintain social stability for economic development. Authoritarian deliberation also has been closely associated with the growing autonomy and flexibility at the local level to experiment the so-called ‘social management innovations (shehui guanli chuangxin)’ as one key component of China’s governance scheme in the past decade.Footnote 2 Aiming at achieving social stability and securing CCP’s leadership, the key areas of social management innovation include improving governance efficiency, coordination, and capacities by involving diverse governance actors.Footnote 3 As one major component of the comprehensive ‘innovation’ scheme, deliberation has become a practical instrument for decision making promoted by the Party-state at the grassroots level. In the past decade, local governments have experimented deliberation as a mechanism for managing social unrest (Hess, Reference Hess2009) and dealing with disputes associated with local governance affair (He, Reference He2014). To date, studies are still ‘limited in scope and focused on particular problems of governance’ (He and Warren, Reference He and Warren2011: 269), and there is inadequate research on general mechanisms that ‘producing a systemic relationship between authoritarianism and deliberation.’ (He and Warren, Reference He and Warren2011: 271).
This study contributes to the authoritarian deliberation thesis in twofold. On the one hand, this research illustrates the key mechanisms of how authoritarian deliberation can be applied to political development in China today. Situated in the ‘social management innovation’ scheme, this research examines in what ways and to what extent deliberation is employed to deal with practical governance matters and further shapes grassroots level governance mechanisms in general. The ‘social management innovation’ scheme lays a special emphasis on introducing deliberation as a key neighborhood governance mechanism, and considers this as a shift from a government-dominated administration mode to a co-governance (gongzhi) mode which involves diverse actors and non-state organizations. The local state claims that deliberation rests on residents’ ‘autonomous governance (zizhi)’ through which citizens are empowered to make decisions regarding neighborhood affairs, operates through ‘co-governance’ in which multiple actors (including both state and non-state actors) participate, and eventually aims at achieving ‘good governance (shanzhi)’ in society. This study offers empirical evidence of how and to what extent local governments carry out this ‘social management innovation’ scheme through neighborhood deliberation.
On the other hand, this study examines authoritarian deliberation as a neighborhood governance strategy with a ‘systemic approach to deliberative democracy’ (Mansbridge et al., Reference Mansbridge, Bohman, Chambers, Christiano, Fung, Parkinson, Thompson, Warren, John and Jane2012). This prominent approach looks beyond isolated deliberative practices and institutions to examine their interdependence and interaction within a larger-scale deliberative system. The essence of the systemic approach of deliberative democracy is that it allows assessment of the completeness and effectiveness of deliberative systems. During this process, deliberative capacity building, as John Dryzek (Reference Dryzek2009) argues, can produce authentic, inclusive, and consequential deliberations that integrate micro-level deliberative forums and macro-level communication in the public sphere into one dynamic system, which does not have to be limited to any particular kind of political institution. To date, there have been inadequate in-depth empirical studies illustrating the possibilities and complexities of how deliberative and non-deliberative factors coexist and interact with each other in an authoritarian setting to shape a deliberative system at large. As this study shows, deliberation is introduced as an instrumental tool for local governance performance, altogether with other non-deliberative activities such as mobilizing and co-opting specifically targeted groups (i.e., resident volunteers and CCP members) and maximization of their influences in the deliberation process.
This study focuses on authoritarian deliberation at the grassroots level. The development of authoritarian deliberation in China in recent years is closely associated with the political scenario which tolerates, relatively speaking, more space for grassroots level governance, with endorsing the participation of social organizations (shehui tuanti) in local governance and encouraging ‘autonomous governance’ of residents in urban neighborhoods. In this context, Chinese urban neighborhoods have become a critical contested ground for authoritarian deliberation with two distinct features. One is that despite the rigid political control of CCP, neighborhood deliberation is associated with a certain level of flexibility and autonomy, which accommodate multiple (especially non-state) actors, and various forms of participation in searching for practical resolutions for neighborhood conflicts. The other feature is that neighborhood deliberation is one component of the overall local governance strategy which includes a mix of deliberative features and non-deliberative activities, deliberative institutions and other kinds of political institutions, and strategies for deliberation, and other tactics for neighborhood governance. More specifically, this study examines the role of Residents’ Committees (juweihui) as the agent of the state in shaping deliberation mechanisms in middle-class neighborhoods. It explores how neighborhood deliberations are operated mainly by resident representatives and Residents’ Committee staff to maximize resident mobilization and coordination between the state and non-state organizations. In addition, this study also explores the impacts of the leadership of CCP organizations at the grassroots level on neighborhood deliberation.
2. Authoritarian deliberation and grassroots governance in China
In Chinese political culture, there has been a particular emphasis on consensus-based social stability in order to gain prosperity and reinforce regime legitimacy. In this respect, the CCP faces similar functional needs and challenges as the Confucian dynasties. Since China’s impressive economic rise in the 1980s, there have been increasing and intensified popular protests and collective resistance to challenge local-level governance legitimacy (O'Brien and Li, Reference O'Brien and Li2006; Lee, Reference Lee2007; Cai, Reference Cai2008). Popular protests and collective resistance (i.e., protests, demonstrations, marches, sit-ins, group complaints, and so on) had risen from 8,700 in 1993 to 87,000 in 2005. China's stability-oriented and consensus political culture, accompanied by practical GDP-oriented governance issues is the driving force for the authoritarian regime – which is unwilling to accept western electoral democracy – to adopt deliberative politics, particularly at the local level (Dryzek, Reference Dryzek2011; He and Warren, Reference He and Warren2011). Deliberative democracy then is viewed by the CCP as a way of ensuring social harmony by providing places for the people’s problems and demands to be heard and channeled into the political system (Xinhua, 2008).
In addition, grassroots governance has also been a key site for leader-mass relations in Chinese politics. As the foundation of Chinese theories of leadership, leader-mass relations and certain types of policy-making (Blecher, Reference Blecher1979), the Maoist Mass Line theory argues that the success or failure of ‘any kind of work that requires [the masses’] participation’ (Mao, Reference Mao1965) depends ultimately on the masses’ enthusiasm, willingness, and power. Its famous approach ‘from the people, to the people’ emphasized the gathering of ideas and concerns from the people, as well as decision-making that was responsive to the people's opinions. Deliberative democracy in reform-era China is consistent with this political tradition. Especially at the grassroots level, deliberation is considered to be a means of absorbing wisdom and strength from the citizens to improve governance and public policy, and to reduce social conflicts.
As a result, deliberation and mediation have become widely used methods for conflict resolutions at the grassroots level. By 2016, nationwide, there were 780,000 mediation organizations led by the state with 3.8 million mediators composed of government representatives, experts, and citizen volunteers (Guangming Daily, 2017). Chinese local governments have taken significant steps in developing formal deliberative institutions and employing informal deliberations to manage and reduce social conflicts in the last decade. A recent study has shown a strong relationship between the number of social conflicts and the number of local official documents that aim to publicize, introduce, organize, regulate, and report a diversity of deliberative practices (He and Wu, Reference He and Wu2017). In 2015, a comprehensive national policy lays out detailed guidelines for grassroots-level (urban neighborhoods and villages) deliberation (State Council, 2015). Aiming at establishing an institutionalized deliberative system at the grassroots level, the policy encourages a wide range of participants, diverse formats of deliberation, standardized deliberation procedures, and implementation of deliberative outcomes.
The development of deliberative politics at the grassroots level involves the strong leadership of the Party-state. Both the ‘social management innovation’ scheme and the 2015 national policy guidelines for grassroots-level deliberation, clearly state the firm position of the CCP’s leadership. In the existing deliberative practices, key figures of local officials normally play a decisive role in initiating and performing these practices, and local government offices almost always organize and facilitate the deliberative forums. A notable example is the annual Zeguo deliberative poll in the city of Wenling, in which outcomes determine the local government's policy choices of funding allocation for infrastructure projects (Fishkin et al., Reference Fishkin, He, Luskin and Siu2010). Other empirical evidence has suggested (Tang, Reference Tang2015a, Reference Tang2015b), that the possession of comprehensive local information and rich administrative resources have helped local governments to set agendas. In addition, because Party-state officials tend to know what problems need to be discussed with whom, they can help to recruit participants from the better-targeted interest groups. Especially when deliberative forums are adopted as a new form of deliberative governance mechanism to solve a particular social problem, they underwrite deliberative events by providing information, facilities, and preparation (He, Reference He2018). The leading role of local government in the deliberative events helps to ensure that deliberative outcomes are followed by practical policies and actions on the part of decision-makers.
Authoritarian deliberation at the grassroots level is associated with a certain degree of local autonomy and flexibility regarding practical governance issues. As existing studies have shown, most deliberations do not go beyond practical local governance matters. And there has been tolerance, and even encouragement for local deliberations to address various kinds of issues, including participatory budgeting (Wu and Wang, Reference Wu and Wang2012), village assemblies (Tan, Reference Tan, Leib and He2006), and public consultations for selecting local leaders (He and Thøgersen, Reference He and Thøgersen2010), price adjustments at the local level (Ergenc, Reference Ergenc2014), and local environment projects (Mertha, Reference Mertha2009; Han, Reference Han2014). At the grassroots level, in recent years the so-called ‘Neighbourhood Deliberation Training Camp (shequ xieshang xunlian ying)’ has become a popular government training program. Usually organized by the Street Office (jiedao) – the lowest level of government offices, those training camps invite university professors, lawyers and experienced social workers to deliver seminars on how to improve deliberative skills to Street Office and Residents’ Committee staff, social workers and resident volunteers on a regular basis.Footnote 4
To have a better understanding and big picture of in what ways and to what extent deliberation shapes grassroots governance mechanisms, a systemic approach of deliberative democracy (Mansbridge et al., Reference Mansbridge, Bohman, Chambers, Christiano, Fung, Parkinson, Thompson, Warren, John and Jane2012) fits this need well. This approach seeks to understand diverse sites and kinds of deliberative practice and institutions within broader systems, such that even imperfectly deliberative moments can serve deliberative functions. Systems can thus include diverse (both formal and informal) deliberative gatherings, multiple kinds of actors, and a diversity of institutions. On the systems view, when one deliberative site is overshadowed by (say) purely strategic talk aimed to move an issue onto the public agenda, another site could, in principle, provide the balance necessary for system-level deliberative outcomes. The analytical focus of systemic approach thus goes beyond a single practice such as protesting – which, in itself, may have little deliberative quality – to look at whether the interactions among the various parts make positive contributions to an overall deliberative system. Growing discussions have contributed to the key criteria for a functional deliberative system. Dryzek (Reference Dryzek2011) argues that authenticity, inclusiveness, and consequentiality are three key assessment criteria for deliberative systems. Fishkin's ‘four criteria for popular control’ (2018: 13–14), also readdress the importance of inclusion and impact, while further developing elaborations on the criterion of authenticity. According to Fishkin, participants should have the alternatives for public decision-making that are significantly different to choose from – what he calls choice. In addition, Fishkin highlights the importance of effectively motivating people to offer reasoning in a well-informed setting of deliberation.
Chinese urban middle-class neighborhoods offer an ideal research site to explore the systematic approach of authoritarian deliberation, due to the new living environment that presents a privileged lifestyle based on certain levels of affluence of the residents. Along with the rise of private home ownership and urban middle-class residential estates, disputes and conflicts have risen between the residents, resident self-elected organization (homeowner associations), real estate developer and property management companies, and the local government. The local state, through their agent Residents’ Committees, actively intervenes and mediates the conflicts in those neighborhoods. The Residents’ Committees are situated in every residential community, with five to 10 staff hired by the local government. As a mode of communication, deliberation seeks the legitimacy of outcomes, in terms of the mutual agreement of all those affected by a decision. This process is about opinion and consensus formation, which serves the practical needs for Residents’ Committees to resolve the conflicts before they go beyond the neighborhoods.
The data used in this paper are collected from over 45 middle-class residential communities in six cities located in north eastern, eastern, central south, and southern China. Between 2011 and 2016 I had taken in total 12 fieldtrips to those cities and conducted over 100 in-depth interviewees. However, I only report and analyze three cases in detail. Neighborhood deliberation, to a large extent, depends on the specific living environment of the residential communities, as well as the nature of the issues. The three cases represent three types of conflicts and different mechanisms in middle-class neighborhood deliberation. In the first case, Residents’ Committees were more directly involved in the deliberation process when dealing with disputes between residents and issues in relation to the community environment in general. In the second and the third cases, while in dealing with conflicts between residents and property management companies or between residents and the state, Residents’ Committees were more likely to act as a coordinator and facilitator for neighborhood deliberation. In all the three cases, both deliberative and non-deliberative activities took place to shape a system where authoritarianism coexist and interact with each other. In the following sections, I will first explain the governance structure in middle-class neighborhoods and the practical needs for deliberation to be introduced in neighborhood governance. I will then elaborate different roles that Residents’ Committees play in neighborhood deliberation, with three case studies. Then I will discuss how the three mechanisms reflect on a systemic approach of authoritarian deliberation, followed by the conclusion.
3. Governance in urban middle-class neighborhoods
As in most societies, one of the most significant implications of the rise of the middle class in a society lies in its potential to become a driving force for liberal democracy. They carry out active consumption and create social perceptions of ‘people like us’ through their shared comfortable lifestyle. And they develop collective pursuits for protecting private property rights and their political freedom. Especially in a political context like China, speculations have arisen regarding to what extent the rise of the middle class will shape its political prospects. In Chinese urban middle-class neighborhoods, the Party-state promotes a so-called ‘autonomous governance (jumin zizhi)’ governance strategy which encourages the participation of residents in governance matters regarding community affairs (Tomba, Reference Tomba2008). In addition, those neighborhoods have also become the ground for numerous conflicts related to private-property rights and it is argued that the gated residential space contributes to the emergence of a more autonomous middle class through their involvement in property-rights related conflicts (Read, Reference Read2003, Reference Read, Perry and Goldman2007; Tomba, Reference Tomba2005; Rocca, Reference Rocca, Chen and Goodman2013). Therefore, governance in urban middle-class neighborhoods is of special political significance.
To promote an image of high-quality life, the entrance to middle-class residential communities are often signaled by magnificent gates, and those neighborhoods have introduced professional services to manage community facilities provided by property management companies (Atkinson and Blandy, Reference Atkinson and Blandy2005). Chinese middle-class neighborhoods usually accommodate a large number of residents, ranging from 2,000 or 3,000 to over 10,000 in one residential compound. Across the country, urban middle-class residents consist of public servants, professionals, and private business owners. In addition to the symbol of status, Chinese middle-class neighborhoods are also about the residents’ pursuit of privacy and social exclusion (Pow, Reference Pow2009; Zhang, Reference Zhang2010). Those neighborhoods not only separate groups of different socioeconomic background but also the residents’ work life and their residence. The rise of middle-class neighborhoods has weakened ties between residents’ workplace and residence which was closely tied to each other in the Maoist era. Today the middle-class residents have become clients rather than favored employees (Wang and Murie, Reference Wang and Murie2000; Wu, Reference Wu2005). In general, residents see their residency as a status symbol characterized by private space without any unwanted disturbance (Pow, Reference Pow2009; Zhang, Reference Zhang2010).
The spatial and social exclusion of middle-class neighborhoods has produced new challenges to neighborhood governance in Chinese cities. Residents’ Committees, in general, oversee the administrative tasks in the neighborhoods and implement welfare government programs such as providing assistance to the low-income residents. Ethnographic research in multiple cities suggests that for middle-class residents, the Residents’ Committee's administrative duties and its functions as a community service provider are very distant from their needs. Sometimes, middle-class residents see the Residents’ Committee as an intruder into their privacy which arbitrarily carries out its administrative duties. The high security offered by management companies in the gated communities has also made it difficult for Residents’ Committee staff members to approach residents. In addition to infrequent contacts with the residents, Residents’ Committees also face plural requests and disagreements regarding community affairs from the middle-class residents. The better-off, well-educated residents are more likely to challenge the Residents’ Committee's implementation of government policies, question why something is done one way but not the other, and criticize the staff for not complying with policies. As a result, the lack of frequent contact with residents and insufficient knowledge of the residents’ situation has made it difficult for Residents’ Committees in middle-class neighborhoods to complete their duties.
On the other hand, Chinese middle-class residents have shown collective resistance against the inadequate maintenance of their housing-estate facilities, excessive management fees, and the poor quality of management. As a nationwide phenomenon, the real estate developers usually take for granted their right to leave in place a property-management company that would operate indefinitely. In the absence of any competition, these firms are well positioned to reap handsome profits from management fees. Then the management companies have become the main target when residents are dissatisfied with problems such as poor maintenance of the housing-estate facilities, excessively high management fees, and poor quality of services. Nation-wide, middle-class neighborhoods have become an important contesting ground where the Chinese middle classes interact with the state, the market service providers and each other, through their participation in community governance and homeowner activism (Read, Reference Read2003; Tomba, Reference Tomba2005; Zhang, Reference Zhang2010). As a result, local government required the Residents’ Committees to adopt new strategies to cope with those new governance issues associated with characteristic features of middle-class neighborhoods.
Deliberation then has been introduced and adopted as a popular conflict resolution strategy in Chinese urban neighborhoods. This governance strategy is situated in the framework of neighborhood ‘residents’ autonomous governance’. The local state safeguards social stability by keeping disputes and conflicts inside the residential communities. In addition to resolving the neighborhood conflicts, as this paper shows, neighborhood deliberation is also employed to help maintain mass mobilization and participation among Chinese urban middle-class residents. To achieve those goals, Residents’ Committees, on behalf of the state, play a significant role in neighborhood deliberation. As the rest of this paper shows, through Residents’ Committees, local governments introduce deliberative practices to middle-class neighborhoods, set up institutional arrangements for neighborhood deliberation, and connect separate deliberations to more macro-level governance mechanisms.
4. Residents’ committees and neighborhood deliberation
In contrast to the Party-state's tight political control and rigid administrative structure, Chinese urban neighborhoods offer more inclusiveness for deliberative activities. For example, in urban middle-class neighborhoods, there exists the agent of the state (i.e., Residents’ Committees), non-state organizations (i.e., resident volunteer groups), representative groups of the residents (i.e., homeowner associations), and market groups (i.e., the real-estate-developing and managing companies). In addition, there is also more flexible space for deliberation at neighborhood level. Especially, residents’ self-organized social activities and organizations serve as the resource pool for neighborhood deliberation. The most popular ones are recreational activities, including group dance, choir, physical exercises (i.e., Taichi, basketball, and table tennis, etc.), and educational programs such as calligraphy, painting, and handcrafts. Those recreational activities have different forms and content from the campaigns under Mao. But one tradition remains – those activities target a particular group of the population in order to mobilize the population as a whole. The active members of those groups are in frequent contact with Residents’ Committee staff and help to liaison between the residents on the one hand and Residents’ Committee and property management companies on the other. They have also become resident participants or volunteers to carry out deliberative talks in the neighborhoods. From the perspective of the systemic approach of deliberative democracy, both the inclusiveness and flexibility are crucial because it offers possibilities for both formal and informal deliberation to take place and intertwine with each other.
As the agent of the state, Residents’ Committees play a significant role in organizing neighborhood deliberative activities. In recent years, they have taken the lead of carrying out experimental exercises of neighborhood deliberation as part of the ‘social management innovation’. For example, in 2016, two Street Offices in Suzhou invested 3.4 million RMB to establish deliberation projects in their 48 residential communities. Over 50,000 residents participated in the call for deliberation topics and submitted 17,000 proposals. Then the residential communities set up their own Community Deliberation Committees (shequ yishihui) to group proposals to different categories. Subsequently, 77 deliberation groups were set up to focus on specific discussion topics (Suzhou Daily, 2016). The topic/project-focused deliberation has become widely used in neighborhood deliberation today. As the following case studies show, Residents’ Committees play different roles in middle-class neighborhood deliberation depending on specific deliberative topics. But in general, they shape the mechanisms of deliberation in middle-class neighborhoods with their particular influences on the quantity and quality of knowledge possessed by different groups regarding the issues at the center, the capability to mobilize informal talks that shape opinion or will formation, and the capacity to provide both official and non-official communicative platforms.
4.1 Case study 1: direct involvement and leading deliberation
Residents’ Committees carry out their daily working tasks by keeping frequent contacts and establishing close personal relationships with the residents. This mass foundation has served as a platform of deliberation and offers a potential space for participation of multiple interest groups who are usually ignored in formal institutional settings. Residents’ Communities have rich knowledge about the residents’ needs and the particular situations of the neighborhood. That helps them to identify various interests groups as inclusively as possible. Since residents in middle-class neighborhoods tend to have less contact with each other, in some situations, Residents’ Committees are more likely to be directly involved and leading deliberation.
In community A, a group of residents had been complaining of noise and hygiene issues caused by the pet store on the compound which rents one of the property management offices. They also reported that there were potential risks that the dogs would attack the children in the community when the pet store staff walked the dogs every day. Some residents requested the pet store to move. Other residents thought the pet store would provide convenience to look after their pets when they were away. The pet store owners refused to move with the argument that they held a valid contract with the property management company. The property management company insisted on discussing the issue with the residents until the lease to the pet store would have expired. A group of residents visited the pet store multiple times but the visits usually turned into verbal insults and confrontation. In the end, the residents and the property management company invited the Residents’ Committee to step in and mediate the situation.
The Residents’ Committee sent a couple of staff to the pet store to investigate the problem, especially the issues of hygiene, noise and children's safety. During their multiple visits to the pet store, the Residents’ Committee staff chatted with the pet store owners, regarding the difficulties and possibilities to create a cleaner and quieter environment, instead of moving out. The pet store owners considered the Residents’ Committee staff had no direct interests in the disputes and the understandings of their difficulties shown by the staff made the pet store owners soften their tone and abandon their antagonism. The Residents’ Committee staff brought the messages back to the residents. They explained the pet store owners reasoning and suggested the residents that they consider alternative solutions they would like to accept. Compared with the conversations with the pet store owners, the discussions with the residents were carried out in a more causal and discursive manner. Sometimes the residents had the discussion when visiting the Residents’ Committee offices for other business. Sometimes the Residents’ Committee staff dropped by during the break of residents’ social activities and had a quick chat with the residents. Or sometimes they randomly talked to the residents who were taking a walk in the residential compound. During those causal chats, residents discussed with each other and the Residents’ Committee staff, regarding whether they should keep the pet store, and if so how to improve the situation. This process coordinated by Residents’ Committee is crucial for the opinion that will form among the residents. By the time when different interest groups participate in negotiation meetings, they already had a fair amount of knowledge about each other's demands and requests. And the meetings were more likely to focus on the practical solutions, rather than repeated complaints.
The Residents’ Committee then organized a formal deliberation meeting, with representatives of residents, the homeowner association, the property management company, and the pet store. In addition, the Residents’ Committee also invited a lawyer who is also one of their resident volunteers to attend the meeting, providing free consultation regarding the use and lease of the community space. According to the pre-meeting discussions with the residents, the Residents’ Committee invited two groups of resident representatives to attend the meeting – those living close to the pet store and suffering from the noise and hygiene problems and those who would like to keep the pet store. At the meeting, the Residents’ Committee identified the discussion priorities among which the noise and hygiene problem went first, followed by the safety issues and then the use of community space. The resident representatives and the pet store owners were more respectful to each other this time. The pet store owners first apologized for the problems, and then explained the difficulties they were facing, such as the high cost of installing the noise-proof glasses. And the residents then asked the homeowner association and property management company whether they could cover some of the expenses. As a result, it was agreed that the expenses were shared among the pet store, the homeowner association, and the property management company. Also, the meeting reached an agreement regarding the specific time (3–5 pm) of walking the dogs by the pet store.
After they reached this agreement, participants at the meetings showed more enthusiasm in looking for constructive solutions regarding the use of community space. The homeowner association argued that the root of the problem was that the property management company neither consulted the residents regarding the use of the office rented to the pet store, nor did they get the approval from the homeowner association. The Residents’ Committee then took the opportunity to push forward the transparency of the decision-making and communication between the homeowner association and the property management company. Perceived as an independent and neutral party based on their previous activities, the Residents’ Committee was in a more trustworthy position to mobilize participants with different interests. In the end, with the help of the lawyer, the homeowner association and the management company agreed on regulations of the use of community space for future references.
To a certain extent, the Residents’ Committees’ direct involvement in neighborhood deliberation is crucial for the inclusiveness and social capacity aspects of the deliberative capacity building. As mentioned above, there are various interest groups involved in the conflicts, including residents, their homeowner association, the property management companies, and other groups such as restaurants and pet stores in the neighborhood. This is important for having the ‘inclusiveness’ for deliberation (Drzyzek, Reference Dryzek2011; Fishkin, Reference Fishkin2018). This case also showed the importance for the participants to see the alternatives of their decision-making that would make a significant difference (Fishkin, Reference Fishkin2018). So far, it seems like the Residents’ Committees is the only group that can get those interest groups to participate in deliberation. This is largely due to the nature of the Residents’ Committees as the agent of state authorities, as well as their organizational capacities developed through daily governance, as the next case study discusses in detail.
4.2 Case study 2: coordinating and mediating deliberation
Homeowner activism is a key governance issue in Chinese urban middle-class neighborhoods. It is commonly observed that frequent disputes take place between property management companies and the residents represented by their self-elected homeowner associations. The center of disputes between the homeowner association and the property management company tend to be the use of the Public Repair Fund. Importantly, the Public Repair Fund is to be used for restoration and maintenance of the common facilities in the residential compound and it needs homeowner association's approval. However, in most cases, homeowner associations argue the property management company should pay for the repair and take the lead in repairing projects. For their part, the property management companies often refuse to do so and expect the homeowner association to take the responsibilities. Thus, residents feel their property rights and collective interests are violated by the greedy and irresponsible property management company and collective discontent among the residents tends to spread quickly. In Community B, the residents requested using the Public Repair Fund to fix the problems of the lifts (in two buildings) and leaking in the walls (in five buildings). But the property management company argued that the problems only occurred to a small proportion of the buildings and thus they should not use the Public Repair Fund which was supposed to be used for common problems identified in the community. The residents were furious about the rejection and suggestion that the repairing cost should be paid by the residents in those affected buildings. They started organizing collective actions such as petitions, protests, and even violent confrontations.
When it comes to questions regarding the use of the Public Repair Fund and the financial transparency of property management companies, Residents’ Committees tend to be less directly involved. They usually use their organizational capacities to coordinate and mediate deliberative talks, both formally and informally. In the case of Community B, both the residents and the property management company turned to the Residents’ Committee. The Residents’ Committee then set up a deliberation group, composed of representatives of property management company, the homeowner association members, and resident volunteers. The resident volunteers included resident group leaders and members of the neighborhood CCP branches. Through the Residents’ Committee's extensive resident volunteer network in the community, the resident volunteers in the deliberation group managed to represent each building. There were two key questions of the debates regarding the funding source for the repair and who (the homeowner association or the property management company) should take the lead and the responsibility to organize the repair project.
After identifying the key issues, the Residents’ Committee mobilized resident volunteers in each grid to collect residents’ opinions and to accompany the building manager to participate in preparatory talks between the property management company and the residents. And then it organized a meeting for the deliberation group on a Saturday afternoon. There were around 10 people who attended the meeting, including one representative from the lift company. The 2-hour meeting focused on the solutions for the two issues. In the end, the homeowner association managed to use the Public Repair Fund and agreed to take the lead in organizing the repair project, while the property management company agreed to be in charge of the operation of the repair project. The deliberation did not end in the 2-hour meeting. The Residents’ Committee staff took the minutes of the meeting and then sent it to the Residents’ WeChat (the most popular social media in China) group. With the use of social media, the deliberation has become more inclusive, with the extensive reach of the information to all groups being affected, especially the marginalized groups.
In this case, the Residents’ Committee helped to organize direct communication, facilitated efficient communication, and more importantly, pushed the transparency of the discussions among a small group of people to a larger group of the residents. During this process, Residents’ Committees continue its function of monitoring residents’ activities, but they have gradually withdrawn from decision-making. Instead, they place themselves in the position of issue identification and coordination. In this way, they have received more public support since the residents consider they are more impartial and helpful. More importantly, through the coordination work of Residents’ Committees, participants were better informed than previously and could adjust their reasoning accordingly, which is crucial for a deliberative system.
4.3 Case study 3: transmission of deliberative outcomes
When it comes to conflicts between residents and the state, the nature of Residents’ Committees as the state agents leads to their needs in leading the deliberation to the ‘right direction’. In this scenario, since Residents’ Committees do not have decision-making authorities, their roles of coordinating deliberative talks and transmitting deliberative outcomes become more crucial. In Community C, there are monthly regular meetings among resident representatives, resident group leaders and CCP member residents for collecting and exchanging information of residents’ requests. Nearly 40 people attend those meetings every time. For issues that have the potential to cause large-scale social unrest, the Residents’ Committees report to their supervisory government offices. When residents in Community C heard that a PX (P-Xylene) project was planned to be settled in their neighborhood, they started to worry about the damage to the local environment. Within a couple of weeks, different versions of the stories, and information with unconfirmed sources quickly spread out in the neighborhood. A group of residents then started to circulate a petition letter and to plan a protest in front of the government office building.
Through its 123 CCP member residents and other resident volunteers, the Residents’ Committee in Community C transformed their monthly meeting into a more institutionalized form. The so-called ‘Community Deliberation Committee (CDC)’ was formally registered as a civil organization under Residents’ Committee C and its supervisory government office. The CDC then became the key venue for the residents and the local government to discuss the PX project. At the CDC held meetings among the residents, the volunteers on behalf of the neighborhood Party branch, explained to the residents why this neighborhood was selected to host the PX project and what harms this PX project would produce. Those are the key information the residents would like to know but was missing in the official announcement. Through this act, the CDC gradually gained the trust from the residents who consider it being fair in this situation. And then the CDC invited local government officials to meet the residents. At the meeting, the government officials explained the project plan would not harm the residential environment. But the residents were not convinced. They provided a list of the potential environment damages they were concerned about. The government officials agreed to take the information gathered through the CDC meeting back to their office, and to provide feedbacks through the CDC.
In addition, at the CDC meetings, the Residents’ Committee suggested the residents to follow the petitioning procedures accepted by the government, rather than using illegal modes such as protests. When the residents received feedbacks from the local government, the CDC organized another round of discussions among the residents. The feedback also failed to convince the residents. And the CDC then, on behalf of the residents, lodged a petition to municipal government offices. In the end, the government decided to have the PX project on hold and the residents agreed to reconsider the proposal with more provided information. It has been 2 years and the local government has not reinitiated the project. In this case, the institutionalized neighborhood deliberation which is under the lead of Residents’ Committees and engineered with resident volunteers, relates neighborhood deliberations with other governance strategies, such as resident mobilization. The CDC then has become an important dynamic to connect separate, informal deliberative outcomes with the formal decision-making process.
With very practical and specific goals to achieve, Chinese citizens normally ask for intervention by a higher-level state authority in their disputes or publicize their concerns through the media or the internet to attract the attention of higher-level authorities (Cai, Reference Cai2008). Neighborhood deliberation is no exception. It requires effective reflection between deliberative activities in the neighborhoods and the empowerment of deliberative outcomes. As shown in this case, Residents’ Committees can maximize its instrumental role in connecting the public sphere and state authorities. Residents’ Committees can provide institutional coordination to carry out both the ‘transmission’ and ‘reflection’ process neighborhood deliberation. The semi-official status of the Residents’ Committees makes various interest groups think the deliberative talks coordinated by Residents’ Committees will lead to some solutions reinforced by official authorities. It is interesting to note that in some cases, the local police were also included in the WeChat group and they were invited by the residents. Because they consider it is important to have authority involved in the discussion process for the delivery of the deliberative outcomes.
In this scenario, deliberation outside formal institutional settings plays a particularly important role in authoritarian deliberation, since it fills in the gap between mass participation and the exclusion and non-transparency of decision-making in the current political system. In the context of urban neighborhoods, informal deliberation helps to disseminate information which is unavailable from official channels, mobilize discussions that allow different voices, and shape opinion formation through clarifying misunderstandings and reasoning. The degree of the flexibility and autonomy of the local government determines in what ways and to what extent authoritarian deliberation can be effectively practiced to shape local governance mechanisms. The local flexibility and autonomy directly influence the impacts of neighborhood deliberation. Only if the residents see their deliberative activities would make a difference in affecting the final decision, they will be motivated to participate the next time. And this kind of continuity is crucial for systemic practices of authoritarian deliberation to cover a wide range of participants, issues and time periods. This will eventually differentiate authoritarian deliberation from just talking to a form of political participation. Empirical evidence in Zeguo and Shanghai has shown that public deliberation outcomes can make policy recommendations accepted by the local government.Footnote 5
5. Discussions: authoritarian deliberation under China's party-state
For a functional deliberative system, it is important to accommodate both formal deliberations such as conventional government assemblies and more inclusive and informal deliberative gatherings among multiple actors and institutions, including civil society, media discussion, everyday talk, and Internet exchanges (Dryzek, Reference Dryzek2011). This ‘discursive turn’ (Dryzek, Reference Dryzek2009; Tang, Reference Tang2015b) in deliberative democracy have influential impacts on the development of deliberative democracy in different political context. Especially when it comes to authoritarian deliberation, discursive deliberation offers inclusiveness – relatively speaking – of citizen participation, when citizens are normally excluded from decision-making within the existing legislature. In the context of Chinese urban neighbourhood governance, the driving force for discursive deliberation is resident mobilization through Residents’ Committees.
As the three case studies have shown, Residents’ Committees, on behalf of the state, become key coordinator and mediator during the deliberation process in middle-class neighborhoods. Residents’ Committees usually consider each residential building as a resident group (jumin xiaozhu) which has two or three resident volunteers. The resident volunteers are like the glue to hold the governance network together in a Chinese urban neighborhood. Through the activities of resident volunteers, neighborhood deliberation is promoted as a governance mechanism that is largely operated through residents’ initiatives and volunteering, and thus reinforces the concept and practices of ‘residents’ autonomous governance (jumin zizhi)’ in urban neighborhoods. In this scenario, how to ensure the voices of marginalized groups are involved in the deliberation has become a challenge, which is intertwined with a traditional political strategy of CCP: the mass mobilization.
The resident volunteers’ work approach to facilitate neighborhood deliberation follows the CCP's traditional mass mobilization tradition. In some cases, resident volunteers directly participate in the mediation of the conflicts. In other cases, they are not directly involved in the mediation process. Instead, they actively monitor the residents’ activities and report to Residents’ Committees if they spot any potential collective incidents. And they also help to collect residents’ opinions and clarify misunderstandings before the formal deliberation meetings. The resident volunteers, in general, have non-material incentives to take part in convincing the dispute parties to compromise. Those incentives are largely associated with their relations with the Residents’ Committees, the authority they perceive to represent, and their CCP membership. During the interviews, the resident volunteers always emphasized on ‘I am not doing this for myself.’ They often refer to the Party leadership and the Mass Line which they believe have brought the legitimacy for their mediation activities.
Through the recruitment of resident volunteers, Residents’ Committees manage to mobilize resident participation, to facilitate not only deliberation meetings but more importantly, the pre- and after-meeting informal talks which contribute significantly to the deliberative outcomes. None of these deliberative activities alone would make a functional deliberative system. As the case studies suggest, usually those deliberative activities are intertwined with other political activities which are not necessarily deliberative. They grow interdependence and work together to solve practical governance issues in a deliberative way. For example, the neighborhood deliberation goes hand in hand with the Party building (dangjian) in urban neighborhoods – another key component of ‘social management innovation’. The Party building in urban residential communities has been a key territorial strategy of enhancing Party building work at grassroots levels.Footnote 6 Take Community A as an example, 16% of their resident group members are CCP members and over 50% of the group leaders are CCP members. In Community B, there are in total 32 resident activity groups and nearly 30% of the group leaders are CCP members. When organizing resident activities, the Residents’ Committee usually provided a signing in the list for the participants, with a question of ‘Are you a CCP member?’ One target group for resident volunteer recruitment for neighborhood deliberation is the neighborhood Party branch and CCP member residents.
Both mass mobilization and Party building manage to co-opt multiple interest groups in middle-class neighborhoods to participate in deliberation, including residents, property management companies and the local state. Those governance strategies are not deliberative in nature, but to a certain extent, they contribute to a larger-scale deliberative system at the neighborhood level by showing more tolerance of different opinions, more inclusiveness of participant groups, and more effectiveness of achieving agreements. On the other hand, deliberation centers around neighborhood Party organizations have strengthened the CCP’s control and leadership at the grassroots level. Therefore, both deliberative activities and other political strategies and elements of the Party-state together featured neighborhood deliberation in Chinese middle-class residential communities. The CCP's recent documents echo this approach very well, which points out that the long-term goal is to develop not just deliberative democracy in a few places, but rather a ‘multi-institutional,’ ‘complete system of deliberative democracy.’Footnote 7
6. Conclusion
With a particular focus on neighborhood governance, this paper examines in what ways and to what extent authoritarian deliberation is operated in the Chinese context. Along with the rise of private home ownership and urban middle-class residential estates, disputes and conflicts have risen between the residents, resident self-elected organization (homeowner associations), real estate developer and property management companies, and the local government. Through three case studies, this paper has shown the local state, through their agent Residents’ Committees, actively adopts deliberative means to intervene and mediate the conflicts in those neighborhoods. During this process, deliberation has become an instrumental tool for conflict resolution introduced by the local government to middle-class neighborhoods. Those deliberative practices, on the one hand, improve the deliberative capacity of neighborhood governance. On the other hand, those practices to a certain extent reinforce the party-state's leadership through mass mobilization led by the local state.
Neighborhood deliberation in Chinese middle-class communities suggests that it is important to examine authoritarian deliberation from a systemic approach. That is, deliberative activities alone do not make deliberative democracy in an authoritarian regime. It is the dynamic interactions between deliberation and authoritarianism, between deliberative and non-deliberative features, and between formal deliberative meetings and informal deliberative talks that contribute to a functional deliberative system. The case studies of the neighborhood level deliberation show the important criteria of a deliberative system in the western democratic context, such as inclusion, choice, reasoning and impacts on the decision-making (Dryzek, Reference Dryzek2011; Fishkin, Reference Fishkin2018). But the systemic approach of authoritarian deliberation includes a mix of deliberative elements and other features of political culture, traditions, strategies, and institutions. For example, CCP's mass mobilization tradition and Party-building practices have been continuously influential for deliberative activities in China. Also, authoritarian deliberation cannot isolate deliberation from the involvement of the state authorities. Both formal and informal institution arrangements are crucial in conveying isolated discursive deliberative outcomes to the empowered space. From a systemic point of view, the mix of deliberative and non-deliberative features is a normal process for the development of a functional deliberative system where the non-deliberative parts can be compensated by deliberative elements later. For authoritarian deliberation, the question is more of whether and to what extent there is adequate, functional and coordinated institutional responsiveness to discursive changes, rather than eliminating non-deliberative or non-democratic elements of the existing institutions.
The systemic approach of authoritarian deliberation is also important in examining the process of democratization of authoritarian states in terms of improved democratic values and actions and citizen competency (Tang, Reference Tang2014). This is especially important for the Chinese middle class. Like in most societies, the significances of a strong middle class lie in their impacts on economic, social, and political life. The interactions between neighborhood deliberation and middle-class residents’ participation in community affairs could bring better social policies, but also the improved participatory capacity of the middle-class residents. Middle-class groups’ participatory capacity could transform individuals and groups from deliberative actors – those who are involved in different sections of a deliberative system – to deliberative influences – those who can exert impacts on other participants’ opinions through reasoning and in turn orientate the deliberative outcomes. That would have more significant implications for the country's political future.
Acknowledgment
The author would like to thank Prof Baogang He, Prof Mark Warren, Prof Hendrik Wagenaar, and Prof Dezhi Tong for their valuable comments and suggestions on the earlier draft of the article.
Beibei Tang is an Associate Professor in the Department of China Studies at Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University in Suzhou, China. Her research focuses on state-society relations, deliberative governance at the grassroots level and social class in contemporary China. She has published her research in high-impact journals such as The China Quarterly, The China Journal and Journal of Contemporary China. She is the winner of 2015 Gordon White Prize (The China Quarterly).
