Contentious challenges and state capacity : why do governments respond differently to social protests in contemporary China?

Abstract

Grassroots contention has become one of major challenges that the Chinese Communist Party has to confront over the past decade. With the skyrocketing number of social protest in China, the ruling communist party-state has also demonstrated considerable variation in the methods of its responses to contentious challenges, particularly at the local level. While the party-state still ruthlessly represses its societal challengers in many instances, local authorities have nevertheless made concessions in other cases in order to avoid the use of extensive state violence, illustrating the possibility of an authoritarian state compromising with contentious claims-makers.

This research takes a state-centered approach to explore the factors that could determine government reactions as well as investigate the rationale behind actual state responses in real instances of contentious politics. Based on in-depth analysis of six empirical cases, state capacity has been identified as a crucial viable that shapes varied government responses to grassroots contention. Governments with stronger fiscal, coercive, and bureaucratic resources are more capable of managing claim-making processes and achieving effective on-site control over social protesters, which facilitates settlement via accommodation and concession; while governments of weaker capacity are less able to control disturbances and avoid conflict escalation, often bringing a higher level of disruption to local social stability and ending in state repression and coercion.

A popular expectation assumes that contentious challenges serve as a driving force to liberalize authoritarian regimes. Government responses to contentious challenges deserve greater attention from students of contentious politics. Such analysis could provide new perspectives to better understand the nuanced interactions between state authorities and societal power-brokers, as well as assess the resilience of authoritarian regimes. This work contributes to bringing the state back under examination to account for the outcome of protest episodes, which might open up interesting lines of future empirical enquiry into China’s burgeoning contentious politics.