Bargaining for justice: A means to resolve competing justice claims

In many types of social situations, individuals defend their claims to a portion of the rewards by arguing that they are just. Although a great deal of research demonstrates that individuals differ in their distribution preferences and thus their beliefs about what is fair, the literature curiously omits consideration of the consequences of these differences, especially the conflict they may engender. This paper first reviews the few attempts to address such justice conflict. The limitations of these approaches suggest concerns to be addressed in an alternative framework. The paper presents a theoretical discussion of this alternative that integrates assumptions about distribution preferences, justice beliefs, conditions fostering the emergence of justice conflict, and elements of negotiation processes as a basic framework for predictions about the bargaining strategies individuals may employ to resolve competing justice claims.     

Chinese democracy: The lessons of failure

China's experiments with democracy in this century were few in number, short in duration, and limited in their democratic characteristics. Democratic institutions malfunctioned in numerous ways. Nine sets of causes for the failure of Chinese democracy can be suggested: ideology, internal and external war, military intervention, Chinese political culture, underdevelopment, a peasant mass, flaws in the design of Chinese constitutions, moral failures by democratic politicians, or the lack of transactional benefits for military‐based elites in the process of democratic transition. Each of these factors is reviewed critically with an eye to its possible lessons.