Capitalist Development, Entrepreneurial Class, and Democratization in China

Abstract

The structural theory of democracy postulates that capitalism is an important, if not indispensable, catalyst to democratization. For some scholars, capitalism produces a bourgeoisie that is vital to democracy largely because this class, unlike the aristocracy, does not have to depend on coercive state power to survive and thrive.1 For many others who concentrate on contemporary democratic transitions, capitalism expands the middle class that at a certain evolutionary stage would turn to crucial social pressure for democratization.2 Most structural theorists agree that capitalist development, by its logic, would transform the state-society relations and shape a pattern of class alliances in favor of the growth of a whose main function is to provide a counterweight to state power and prevent its tyrannical abuse.3 China's seemingly steady march toward capitalism has prompted many China specialists to take a structural approach. They argue that the lack or weakness of civil society in China accounted for the failure of the 1989 pro-democracy movement and impeded democratic transition. Yet capitalist development