Here's a little paper I wrote as a writing sample for a job application. It's talking about the future of township election reform in China.
In his 2002 article The Politics of Introducing Direct Township
Elections in China, Lianjiang Li tackles the recent trend in China toward
democratic township elections, especially in poorer and more rural townships. Writing over a decade later, Joseph Fewsmith
examines the same kinds of township elections in his book The Logic and Limits of Political Reform in China, giving
perspective on and challenging some of Li's predictions. By comparing and
contrasting these two authors, the future of township elections in China can
become a bit clearer to observers.
In his article, Li cites
some key points that some people in China use to argue for more democratic
township elections, but doesn't discuss some of the problems with these
arguments. These advocates for township
elections cite four major reasons.
First, free elections can act as a safety valve against peasant anger
towards excessive tax collection and the "peasant burden" (nongmin fudan). Second, direct elections make the elected
leaders work harder to develop the economy and resist corruption. Third, elections can help get rid of
corruption, as corrupt officials will be voted out. Lastly, advocates argue that direct election
of leaders is a basic right of citizenship.[1] It's important to note that a few of these
points heavily overlap, namely the ones regarding corruption. But more important is the fact that these
assertions are generally not borne out by evidence from direct elections at the
village level. Although village heads
are democratically elected, problems with corruption still run rampant in
villages in the same types of rural areas that Li is talking about. In fact, as Ben Hillman shows in his study of
a rural county in Yunnan, kinship ties and patron-client relations, problematic
political tactics, are key to village elections.[2] Not only were peasants aware that many
officials were corrupt, they had come to expect corruption, to the extent that
a non-corrupt official could be seen as abnormal.[3]
By the end of his
article Li concludes that the odds are stacked against township elections, but
that advocates of democracy have a few reasons to be optimistic. First, top leaders in Beijing may try to
consolidate their authority by instituting some political reforms. Second, "inter-bureaucratic rivalry may
induce some officials to support direct elections because it will weaken the
domination of the organization department." Third, the reform may convince villagers that
the party is serious about introducing democracy. Fourth, local party officials may introduce
reforms for the sake of their own political careers. And lastly, international pressure could lead
to an increase in political reform and democratization in China.[4] In the ten years after Li published his
article, there were several examples of democratized township elections, many
of which Fewsmith examines in his article.
For the most part, Li's predictions are not vindicated by Fewsmith's
findings. Fewsmith argues that reform
usually depended on a single charismatic leader who would push for
democratization. But, in Sichuan, where
many of these reformed elections were taking place, "[s]trong leaders
promote[d] reforms, but these reforms generally wither[ed] after these leaders
move[d] on."[5] So, while political leaders did, as Li
predicted, hope to advance their careers through political reform, this reform
simply didn't last. This was often
because these leaders were promoted after their political innovation, and their
focus was diverted away from township elections.
It doesn't seem as
though popular ambivalence is to blame for the failure of long-term township
election reform. On that contrary it
appears that the township elections were quite popular among those who were
able to participate. In many of the
elections, hundreds of citizens filed for nomination, and in one township election
in rural Yunnan, voter turnout was 97.1 percent.[6]
(Fewsmith, 100). Despite this
demonstrated support for democratization, it appears that those in positions to
make decisions to sustain reforms did not always have the interests of common
villagers at heart. Furthermore, Li's
prediction that the top party leadership might use township election reform to
build its own authority hasn't come to fruition. It looks like democratization is not on the
fast track to implementation quite yet.
[1] Li, Lianjiang. "The Politics of Introducing
Direct Township Elections in China." The China Quarterly 171
(2002): 704-23. doi:10.1017/s0009443902000438. Web, 718.
[2] Hillman,
Ben. Patronage and Power: Local State Networks and Party-state
Resilience in Rural China. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2014. Print, 28.
[3] Ibid., 115.
[4] Li. "The
Politics of Introducing Direct Township Elections in China." 720-1.
[5] Fewsmith, Joseph. The logic and limits of
political reform in China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2013. Web, 84.
[6] Ibid., 100.
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