Bygone Days and Ballot Boxes: Previous Democratic Experience and Current Village Elections in Rural Northwest China

Abstract

Abstract Does the lack of previous democratic experience in China's recent history hinder the current attempts at democratic reforms at the local level? Many researchers have pointed to the collective memory of prior democratic experience and to explain the relatively smooth democratic transitions in Eastern Europe and Latin America. The People's Republic of China lacks political memory of any democratic experience at the national level; however, in northern Shaanxi province, democratic elections occurred at the local level throughout the 1930s and 1940s. In fact, historians have demonstrated that these were indeed free and fair elections. Given the previous democratic elections at the local level in Shaanxi, this paper addresses the question: Are current village elections in the Northern Shaanxi region more democratic than those areas without any history of free and fair local elections? In a six county survey conducted in the year 2000 in Shaanxi province, two counties had a history of local elections f...