The inclination of Leviathan : the expansion and maintenance of coercive capacity in China

Abstract

Coercive power is the buttress of the authoritarian regime, performing a critical role in securing autocrats’ survival. Therefore, authoritarian states typically strive for stronger coercive capacity. However, the expansion of coercive power brings up the dilemma of cohesion. For example, the collusion within the coercive apparatus tends to reduce the compliance in policy implementation and empowered coercive agents may pose a direct threat to the autocrats, with the possibility of a coup d’état. How do autocrats maintain their control of coercive power during the expansion of the scope of their coercive apparatus? The dissertation project has explored the expansion and maintenance of coercive power in China using three different cases organized around the dilemma between scope and cohesion. After decades of scope expansion, the coercive apparatus in China has become unprecedentedly strong, penetrating deeply into society across a wide range of domains. By identifying two dimensions of solutions, we examined three different strategies that help China’s leaders alleviate the dilemma: digital surveillance, routinized temporary institutions, and purging. The first two involve technical or institutional innovations that allow autocrats to expand the scope of coercion power while doing less damage to cohesion. The third strategy of purging directly targets the problem of low cohesion in an effort to reclaim the coercive agency’s compliance and loyalty through deterrence. In the three independent papers, I examine in detail how China is pushing these strategies forward in order to draw implications on the bigger picture of how China can maintain tight control over its coercive apparatus.