Grounds for self-government? Changes in land ownership and democratic participation in Chinese communities

Do variations in land ownership affect people’s democratic participation? Quantitative, cross-country research on this topic suffers from the non-comparability of regulatory systems and cultures, and the use of crude indicators to identify participation. This study attempts to overcome these methodological problems, by employing indicators of procedural and substantive participation in a structured, diachronic comparison of qualitative data from five sites in China – an authoritarian state, which, however, requires residents of urban communities and villages to participate in ‘self-government’. It examines whether and why changing land from collective ownership to state ownership, and residents’ compensated acquisition of cash and secure, fungible assets, strengthens or weakens participation in self-government. In the research sites, collective land ownership is found to stimulate participation in self-government. Transformation of the land to state ownership and people’s acquisition of private property weakens participation. The robust results of the study support the direction of a causal argument that collective land ownership is conducive to democratic participation. These findings imply that scholars and policymakers should consider the potentially adverse political consequences of changing land ownership. A further implication is that, absent substantial political reform, an urbanized China might be less rather than more democratic at the community level.     

Strategic or Principled? The Engagement of Civil Society Organizations with the EU

This article links the literature on the Europeanization of civil society organizations (CSOs) with the literature on the contribution CSOs can make to democracy in the EU. To do so, it asks which are the pull factors that support CSOs’ Europeanization: are they mostly strategic and linked to where law-making and the money are? Or are they likewise linked to a desire to contribute to EU democracy? To explore this question, the article looks at agricultural, environmental and anti-poverty groups and combines fresh qualitative with quantitative data. The findings suggest that we need to distinguish strategic Europeanization, on the one hand, from the identification with supranational democracy, on the other. They also show that the most Europeanized organizations need not be the most interested in EU democracy, whereas organizations with a comparatively low degree of Europeanization can still be interested in EU democracy.     

社会主义民主政治建设的基础性工程——关于推进基层民主建设的思考

基层民主政治建设是社会主义民主政治事业的一项基础性工程。在党的领导下扎实推进基层民主政治的建设,需要在提高认识基础上通过各种途径拓展基层民主政治的深度和广度,重视充分发挥党内民主对于基层民主的保障与促进作用,以改变执政方式为前提,确立以"共治"方式推进基层民主发展的新思路。     

Accountability of Public Servants under Dominant Political Settlements of China: Effects,Challenges, and Issues

Some scholars think that accountability is attainable only under the electoral political system. However, it is argued that China could achieve some weak accountability even without general election system. How could this be achieved in China? The paper attempts to analyze this question with the following steps: first, it describes the specific accountability system by categorizing different approaches based on four dimensions, then focuses on the impacts that these approaches would have, which are based on finance, fairness and efficiency. It is concluded that under a dominant political settlement, only weak accountability exists in China, not real or strong accountability.     

资本主义代议制民主政治制度的元批判——马克思《路易·波拿巴的雾月十八日》新释

《路易·波拿巴的雾月十八日》是多个学科公认的经典名著。但国内外学者对其的解读却往往囿于各自的学科意识,忽视了其作为一篇时事政治评论的创作初衷。基于政治事件史的视角,以马克思《资本论》中成熟的思想作为分析的出发点,能发现马克思在对阶级斗争和国家原理的分析过程中还揭示出了资本主义代议制民主政治制度的本质性缺陷,即"代表"的分裂问题;制度本身无法避免成为保守势力倒转历史车轮的工具;自由主义与民主主义无休止的斗争。这些缺陷使得资本主义国家在周期性经济危机的影响下一直无法摆脱政治困境的周期性反复。当代随着经济危机的反复爆发与萧条的普遍蔓延,各种"煽动者"又开始普遍在资本主义国家政坛上崭露头角,并导致了一系列"黑天鹅"事件的发生。此时重温《路易·波拿巴的雾月十八日》更应别有一番意趣。     

Negotiating normative premises in democracy promotion: Venezuela and the Inter-American Democratic Charter

ABSTRACT

This article analyses negotiations on democracy promotion by looking at the case of the Inter-American Democratic Charter. It argues that Venezuela contested the concept of representative democracy during the Charter negotiations, advancing the notion of “participatory and protagonist democracy” and that, even if it was unsuccessful in its demands, the country contributed to deepening the debate on the concept of democracy, on which there is far from worldwide consensus. The article suggests that the main drivers of the negotiation process and the final agreement were domestic political changes in Venezuela, specific features of the negotiations, and the structural position of Venezuela in the field of democracy promotion in the global and regional contexts, which were, at the time, favourable to a compromising attitude to conclusion of the Charter, even if not to the concept of democracy.     

Rethinking measures of democracy and welfare state universalism: Lessons from subnational research

ABSTRACT

Democracy and the welfare state are two of the most extensively studied concepts and themes in the field of comparative politics. Debate about how to best measure the two concepts has failed to contemplate the extent to which political and social rights are uniformly present across distinct regions of the national territory, despite the presence of substantial subnational research that underscores wide variation inside countries. We argue that this omission hampers our understanding of the two phenomena and we propose a new measure of democracy and healthcare universalism, which we call the Adjusted Measures of Democracy and Welfare Universalism. The new measures integrate territorial inequality into existing national-level indicators, providing a more accurate picture of country performance and opening the door to new, multi-level theory building.     

How is it Possible for Democracies to Effectively Tackle Long-Term Problems?

ABSTRACT

The aim of this essay is to examine if and how it is possible for the political system of democracy to effectively tackle long-term public problems that are wicked in nature, taking climate crisis as an example. It consists of four sections. The first section is devoted to a brief historical overview of the conflict between eco-authoritarianism and ecological democracy. The following section examines if and to what extent “environmental pessimism” – disillusionment with the ability of liberal/capitalist democracies to effectively tackle long-term environmental problems – which has made a remarkable comeback since late 1980s, is empirically grounded, on the basis of performance evaluation of the contracting parties to the Kyoto Protocol (adopted on 11 December 1997 and entered into force on 16 February 2005), and the Climate Change Performance Index that evaluates and ranks the climate mitigation performance of 58 countries responsible for over 90 per cent of global energy-related CO₂ emissions, released every year by Germanwatch and Climate Action Network Europe. The third section focuses on more theoretical/normative issues, critically examining the cogency of a claim, made by no small number of environmental pessimists, that democratic institutions, due to their myopic tendencies, usually work systematically to the disadvantage of future generations. The last section is devoted to the examination of measures thus far advocated and partly put into practice for correcting the myopic tendencies of democracy, emphasizing the vital need for non-representative measures, or self-restraint mechanisms built into democracy itself, whose primary function lies in preventing democracy from degenerating due to the influence of the myopic majority, thereby protecting ecological sustainability and the well-being of future generations.     

西方竞争性政党体制下的政党共识及思考

西方竞争性政党体制下，政党之间除了激烈的竞争外，也存在着共识。共识是西方政党之间关系的一个重要方面。政党共识的出现是由多方面因素造成的，其中政治、社会、文化、政党自身因素起决定性作用。西方政党的共识政治对我国具有重要的启示。     

党内民主与中国共产党理论创新的有效实现

党内民主是不仅是促进党的理论创新及其有效实现的根本前提,也内在地奠定了中国共产党理论创新的实现机制。在新的历史条件下要进一步发挥党内民主对党的理论创新的积极作用,就必须坚持以先进的理论指导党内民主建设,以完善的制度保障党内民主建设,以科学的方法推进党内民主建设。