Deliberative representation: how Chinese authorities enhance political representation by public deliberation

Abstract

Political representation centers on who claims to represent what and the extent to which the audience feels being represented. The mainstream body of scholarship on political representation has focused on electoral-based representation in the context of liberal-democratic settings. China provides an excellent case to study the phenomenon of non-electoral forms of political representation. This article seeks to address the question of how do the Chinese authorities enhance political representation by public deliberation in social welfare policy? Drawing on first-hand official documents and interview accounts from fieldwork conducted in Guangxi and Hubei, as well as secondary data sources, this article undertakes a mechanism-based comparative case study of these two localities, examining the different forms of citizen deliberation in poverty alleviation programs. It reveals that the party regime has developed an increasingly sophisticated set of strategies in establishing representation by deliberative consultation. Furthermore, two distinctive forms of deliberative representation, the state-authoritative model and the light-empowered model can be discerned from the different deliberative participatory experiences of Guangxi and Hubei. The deliberative elements introduced into the poverty alleviation program demonstrate that with a deeper and more consequential engagement of the citizens in welfare policy decision making, there can be an empowered form of political representation generated even in a non-electoral setting.