The study of civil society and, more broadly, state—society relations in China has spurred a cottage industry of late. The emergence of a vibrant and dynamic civil society under an authoritarian regime is an analytical puzzle that continues to engage not just political scientists but scholars across the social sciences. Jessica C. Teets’s Civil Society under Authoritarianism and Daniela Stockmann’s Media Commercialization and Authoritarian Rule in China have sought to tackle this conundrum by analyzing the behavior of various actors emerging from civil society in an authoritarian environment and, conversely, how the Chinese state has engaged and utilized civil society to strengthen its rule.
Lest we should be mistaken, civil society as Teets and Stockmann demonstrate is not synonymous with democratization. Yet the space for stakeholders in China’s civil society has expanded significantly under China’s liberalization, with the studies by these authors empirically reflecting this burgeoning space. State and civil society relations under Xi Jinping have taken on new characteristics, particularly when we consider the recent detention of more than 200 lawyers in July 2015, or the five women activists taken into custody by the police in March 2015. These events suggest that the notion of “space” and the physical space for civil society is flexible and permeable (see Jennifer Y. J. Hsu, “Spaces of Civil Society: The Role of Migrant Non-Governmental Organizations in Beijing and Shanghai,” Progress in Development Studies 12 [2012]: 63–76). Across the civil society sector, from lawyers to activists to churchgoers, the space for civil society stakeholders to expand and conduct their work has shrunk significantly since Xi Jinping came to power. However, if we use the frameworks set out by Teets—consultative authoritarianism—and Stockmann—responsive authoritarianism—then it permits the observer to investigate the nuances that characterizes state–civil society relations across different levels of the state.
Both Teets and Stockmann advance their notions of “authoritarianism” based on rich case studies. According to Teets, state–civil society relations in China moved away from a corporatist model in the early 2000s to a hybrid model of consultative corporatism: combining autonomous civil society with mechanisms of state control. The move toward a consultative authoritarianism model of the state–civil society relationship was largely a result of the decentralization of public-goods provisions, which did not occur to the same extent as fiscal decentralization. As a result, much of the welfare went unfunded and, thus, meant that many local officials did not meet indicators necessary for promotion.
It is in this context that civil society, and more specifically, civil society organizations (CSOs) have come to the fore with regards to providing innovation in delivering welfare. Teets asserts that engagement with these groups led officials to move away from corporatist models of engagement to a more collaborative one. Policy officials were willing to learn from CSOs and consequently, through this learning process, CSOs offer the regime a feedback mechanism leading to endogenous institutional change. Yet we are reminded by Teets (and similarly by Stockmann with her examples of media commercialization) that greater consultation does not lead to democratization; rather, in the Chinese case, it establishes a new model, encouraging autonomous civil society groups to participate in the policymaking process. Under this system, groups are guided in their participation through a system of indirect positive and negative incentives: “[T]he simultaneous existence of an autonomous civil society and the use of multiple, nuanced tools of state control characterize this new consultative authoritarianism model” (Civil Society, p. 180). Teets’s consultative authoritarianism places civil society at the forefront and empowers CSOs as active participants in policy deliberation and policy making process with regards to welfare. Rather than seeing CSOs as victims of state repression, Teets has adeptly illustrated the potential difference that CSOs can make in the policy realm, particularly when we consider CSOs vis-à-vis local officials as a feedback mechanism for the state.
Stockmann’s responsive authoritarianism reads in a similar vein to Teets’s consultative authoritarianism, whereby the media are seen from the perspective of an “input institution.” As Stockmann writes: “These input institutions open up social space, which creates tension between the provision of societal feedback and the threat of social disorder and authoritarian collapse” (Media Commercialization, p. 6). She investigates and analyzes the impact of media marketization in print media and its impact on authoritarian rule in China. As the state withdraws from some areas of media production, this withdrawal has enabled a greater number of social stakeholders to influence the production of news. By examining reporting on two particular issues—labor laws and sentiments toward the United States—Stockmann shows that it is unhelpful to maintain the division of official and unofficial media outlets. Rather, if we are to understand the nature of censorship and what and how certain topics are reported, it is much more useful to think about it in terms of topics that are “open” or “closed.”
Stockmann notes that there is often a bias toward the regime, even in commercial media outlets: “In this semi-independent space for public discourse, the Chinese media tend to be biased in favor of the regime; however, news reporting that supports government policy not only serves the state but also reflects societal demands when the state allows media to respond to them” (p. 36). Consequently, responsive authoritarianism in the Chinese media requires the state to be somewhat tolerant of societal space in order for the mass media market to make a profit. Even so, responsive authoritarianism is a risky scheme for the Chinese state to embrace in the media realm. This is notably the case where the inability to control the political message may facilitate regime change, and regime collapse would be much more costly today than in 1978, before market reforms. Nonetheless, Stockmann’s analysis suggests that by and large, commercial media outlets and their editors will conform to some extent to the official Communist Party line since editors “ultimately remain trapped in the overall political structure that ties them to the state” (p. 156). Herein lies the tension between state and society: A responsive authoritarian state permits some degree of autonomy for the media via commercialization, allowing for a plurality of voices; however, civil society stakeholders, like editors of these commercialized outlets, may decide not to deviate too far from the script.
The variations of authoritarianism presented by Teets and Stockmann highlight the urgent need to conceptually rethink regimes beyond notions of “good,” “bad,” “free,” “oppressive,” “democratic,” and “undemocratic.” Suffice it to say that these binaries have strong limitations in analyses beyond the national level. As Teets’s four local case studies of Beijing, Yunnan, Jiangsu, and Sichuan demonstrate, there is significant variation in the ways that CSOs in each location experience their engagement with local officials and their level of receptiveness to the work and innovation as presented by the CSOs. Likewise with Stockmann’s analysis, we see that the adoption of market mechanisms has permitted a certain degree of freedom in what editors and journalists select as their news stories and the tone in which these stories are published, with the caveat, of course, that there are some procedural checks imposed on newspaper editors.
Teets’ and Stockmann’s studies have clearly illustrated the agency of civil society stakeholders. They do not present CSOs or commercial media as catalysts for dramatic regime change; rather, these key stakeholders provide feedback to the regime in a subtle manner and to the extent that it can lead to policy changes. This is the heart of what “consultative” and “responsive” authoritarianism is about: whereby the state at all levels is engaging with a range of non-state stakeholders to determine policy outcomes.
The strength of both studies resides in the authors’ careful unpacking of their frameworks and skillfully illustrating how authoritarian states differ and utilize a range of strategies in order to engage with civil society. The comparative analysis offered by Teets in her final chapter, where she considers Cuba, Russia, Syria, and Venezuela—with Russia given the most attention—is rich and provokes further thinking about societal agency in an authoritarian context. One attendant worry about her study is that it does not focus on specific types of CSOs and does not show how different issue-based CSOs could affect policy learning.
Stockmann’s comparative analysis focuses on the key aspects of managing the dissemination of news and information under various forms of authoritarian governance, ranging from patronage networks to commercial media strategies. Her analysis of the Middle Eastern and North African regimes that experienced the Arab Spring shows that they had insufficient capacity and infrastructure to control the media, unlike in China. Consequently, this lack of capacity facilitated anti-regime sentiments. Stockmann’s dense volume, weaving the descriptive with the theoretical, the empirical with the analytical, is a testament to her scholarly dedication to bringing this material to light. However, the brief seven-page conclusion detracts somewhat from the overall research. By contending that “[a]uthoritarianism is not completely incompatible with liberal democracy” (p. 260)—through a quick review of Germany, Italy, Japan, and Mexico, indicating that authoritarianism can exist at the subnational level in democracies—she leaves the reader wanting more in terms of fleshing out this argument. Perhaps this, along with a focus on the Internet and social media, could be the focus of a future study.
Both Teets and Stockmann demonstrate with deftness that “authoritarianism” is not a singular concept. These two books offer a nuanced look into China’s authoritarianism and skillfully unpack this notion. Moreover, civil society stakeholders, whether social organizations or the media, have a distinct role to play in offering feedback to the state, with the potential to influence policymaking. The empirical materials presented in both works invite us to apply and test the lessons derived from China to other jurisdictions.
