One-party State Research Articles

Reconciling Confucianism and Nationalism

Confucianism has made a comeback in mainland China over the last two decades or so. Politically minded Confucian revivalists see Confucianism as the core of national identity that differs from “foreign” traditions such as liberalism and they argue for replacing Marxism with Confucianism as the core ideology of the one-party state. But is the ancient tradition of Confucianism compatible with the modern tradition of nationalism? And is it possible to defend a morally appealing form of “Confucian nationalism”? This essay argues that both questions can be answered affirmatively.

Intellectuals and the One-party State in Nationalist China: The Case of the Central Politics School (1927–1947)

AbstractThis paper aims to provide a new perspective on the relationship between Nationalist Party (GMD) cadres and Chinese intellectuals. By studying the Central Politics School, a major GMD political training institute for professional party cadres, I hope to reassess the nature of the GMD one-party state and remind researchers of the difficult choices it faced between backing party-liners needed for the political struggle and accommodating depoliticized intellectuals needed for public administration. This paper will argue that GMD political impotence in competition with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was due less to an inadequate recruitment of capable experts than to the over-specialization of its well-trained cadres on technical tasks. In fact, the cadres from the Central Politics School generally resembled those considered to be ‘intellectuals’ at educational level and in ideology. This compels us to reconsider how to define ‘intellectuals’ and whether they were as uniformly alienated from the one-party state as most of the scholarly literature suggests.

Governance Reforms in China and Vietnam: Marketisation, Leapfrogging and Retro-Fitting

International good governance orthodoxy proposes a set of step-by-step governance reforms as a necessary component of development. However, this orthodox view is more a reflection of persistent myths of development than of its realities. Living examples of this are found in contemporary China and Vietnam. In these two authoritarian one-party states, much international orthodoxy of good governance reform and practice is deliberately contradicted in the reform and opening-up process. In uncovering the underlying political logic of persistent “lag” in governance reforms in Vietnam and China, we observe examples of leapfrogging and retro-fitting, rather than orderly sequencing of governance reforms. The case of rapid marketisation of public service delivery is used to illustrate the arguments. The lesson is clear: good governance can come later.

A Democratic China?

Many are the criticisms of those who feel that the one-party state in China is inadequate, and many are the calls, especially from abroad, for reform. But would a democratic China―as per a western interpretation—be an improvement? In tackling this question, this paper concentrates on voting procedures: those used in elections and those (which may or may not be the same) used in decision-making. This article first looks at the USSR, Eastern and Central Europe, and then briefly at Africa. Next, it considers what could go wrong if a standard, western, multi-party democracy was to be adopted in China. And finally, it offers a more inclusive polity.

Do elected leaders in a limited democracy have real power? Evidence from rural China

Do elected leaders in an authoritarian regime have any real power? Does grassroots democracy in a one-party state entail parochial problems? Making use of primary survey data covering two election cycles in a mountainous area of China, where an administrative village consists of several natural villages (NVs), we find that elected village heads favor their home NVs in resource allocations, especially when these NVs have a large population. In contrast, the home NVs of appointed Communist Party secretaries do not receive disproportionately more resources, on average. This pattern of resource allocation is compatible with the interest of village heads and suggests that as elected leaders, village heads have some true power in resource distribution.

Voter Education: Provincial Autonomy and the Transformation of Chinese Election Law, 1920–1923

Beginning in 1909, mainland Chinese governments routinely held elections and lawmakers devoted considerable resources to writing and revising election laws. The earliest elections, held during the late Qing and the early Republic, utilized laws based on restricted electorates and indirect voting. By contrast, election laws designed by the provincial autonomy movements of the 1920s and the post-1927 Nationalist government featured direct voting in elections with (near-)universal adult suffrage. Each of these two systems of electoral law incorporated elements of foreign electoral practice with concerns and ideas that arose from the experiences and ideals of late imperial Chinese political thought. The transition between these two systems highlights the surprising influence of the short-lived provincial autonomy movement on the legal structures of the centralized one-party states that followed.

Waking from the dream: Mexico's middle classes after 1968

When the postwar boom began to dissipate in the late 1960s, Mexico's middle classes awoke to a new, economically terrifying world. And following massacres of students at peaceful protests in 1968 and 1971, one-party control of Mexican politics dissipated as well. The ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party struggled to recover its legitimacy, but instead saw its support begin to erode. In the following decades, Mexico's middle classes ended up shaping the history of economic and political crisis, facilitating the emergence of neo-liberalism and the transition to democracy. Waking from the Dream tells the story of this profound change from state-led development to neo-liberalism, and from a one-party state to electoral democracy. It describes the fraught history of these tectonic shifts, as politicians and citizens experimented with different strategies to end a series of crises. In the first study to dig deeply into the drama of the middle classes in this period, Walker shows how the most consequential struggles over Mexico's economy and political system occurred between the middle classes and the ruling party.

Anti-incinerator campaigns and the evolution of protest politics in China

As China rapidly urbanises, many cities are building incinerators to try to reduce the growing pressure of rising volumes of municipal waste on landfills. Incinerator projects have provoked NIMBY protests in many countries, but China is an authoritarian one-party state with a demonstrated readiness to suppress protests which challenge government projects. However, some of these protest campaigns have led to cancellation or indefinite postponement of government-supported projects at particular sites. We review three recent campaigns against incinerators – in Beijing, Guangzhou, and Wujiang – explain the successful outcomes of each campaign, and then place these conflicts within the spectrum of environmental protest-politics in China. Finally, we consider whether these outcomes contribute to ‘ecological modernisation’ in the management of municipal waste.

Histories of nations: how their identities were forged

National history is a vital part of national self-definition. Most books on the history of the world try to impose a uniform narrative, written usually from a single writer's point of view. Histories of Nations is different: it presents 28 essays written by a leading historian as a self-portrait of his or her native country, defining the characteristics that embody its sense of nationhood. The countries have been selected to represent every continent and every type of state, large and small, and together they make up two-thirds of the world's population. They range from mature democracies to religious autocracies and one-party states, from countries with a venerable history to those who only came into being in the 20th century. In order to get to grips with the national and cultural differences that both enliven and endanger our world, we need above all to understand different national viewpoints to read the always engaging and often passionate accounts given in this remarkable and unusual book.

Constitutionalism, ethnicity and minority rights in Africa: A reply to Jeremie Gilbert

Jeremie Gilbert’s article highlights a notable feature of contemporary African constitutionalism, namely its neglect of group or minority rights. The omission, as Gilbert explains, is both deliberate and longstanding. Group-based claims and political formations were anathema to postcolonial Africa’s founding elites. Early official hostility to political mobilization on the basis of ethnicity stemmed from a fear that recognition or encouragement of such activity might challenge and undermine the inchoate national identity that fragilely held the new states’ ethnically heterogeneous populations together. Thus, among the first constitutional and legislative changes enacted by Africa’s postcolonial governments were the proscription of political parties allegedly organized along ethnic lines 1 and the removal of structural safeguards that had been inserted in independence constitutions to preserve a realm of territorial autonomy for ethno-regional subnational communities. 2 Although justified in the name of “national unity,” these measures were also aimed at the time at suppressing political opposition, the most formidable of which tended to represent ethno-regional interests and constituencies, and often supported demands for provincial devolution or federalism. The ideology of national unity was similarly deployed by Africa’s state elites to underwrite both the one-party state and presidential autocracy. In pressing the case for explicit constitutional recognition of the rights of ethnic minorities in African states, Gilbert implicitly rejects the early attempts by state elites to delegitimize political mobilization of ethnicity as a negative force in African politics.

Voters and Judges: How the Texas Public Chooses High Court Judges

Judicial scholars have not seriously studied Texas' statewide partisan judicial system for nearly two decades. For most ofits history as a state Texas was a one-party Democratic state, but then moved through a short transitional stage of two-party competition, and is currently a one-party Republican state. In statewide judicial elections, 2004 through 2012, Republicans now easily win all the state's judicial posts, and only partisanship helps to explain vote outcomes in general elections. In the occasional Republican primaries incumbency and the number of challengers are both important. Truly competitive partisan elections do not now exist in Texas, and are exceedingly rare in other states.

Visions of power in Cuba: revolution, redemption, and resistance, 1959-1971

In the tumultuous first decade of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro and other leaders saturated the media with altruistic images of themselves in a campaign to win the hearts of Cuba's six million citizens. In Visions of Power in Cuba, Lillian Guerra argues that these visual representations explained rapidly occurring events and encouraged radical change and mutual self-sacrifice. Mass rallies and labor mobilizations of unprecedented scale produced tangible evidence of what Fidel Castro called unanimous support for a revolution whose moral power defied U.S. control. Yet participation in state-orchestrated spectacles quickly became a requirement for political inclusion in a new Cuba that policed most forms of dissent. Devoted revolutionaries who resisted disastrous economic policies, exposed post-1959 racism, and challenged gender norms set by Cuba's one-party state increasingly found themselves marginalized, silenced, or jailed. Using previously unexplored sources, Guerra focuses on the lived experiences of citizens, including peasants, intellectuals, former prostitutes, black activists, and filmmakers, as they struggled to author their own scripts of revolution by resisting repression, defying state-imposed boundaries, and working for anti-imperial redemption in a truly free Cuba.

The Big Question: Which Country Will Emerge as the Leading Power?

The Big Question: Which Country Will Emerge as the Leading Power?

Russian ‘Liberal’ Opposition: The Divide Be-Tween ‘Radicals’ and ‘Moderates’?

The paper reflects on the divide emerged amidst the liberal opposition in Russia between the left liberals and the right liberals. The divide is not just about split-up between the radicals and the moderates. It re-flects the crisis of liberal ideas as formed in the 1990s, when the tran-sition to economy based on private property was seen as necessary and sufficient condition for dismantling the command economy and the one-party state. The ultimate issue at hand is the notion of the rule of law and a possibility of wider social consensus on the minimal rule of law threshold.

Soft Power: Resonating with the Preferences of a Target Country?

Soft Power:Resonating with the Preferences of a Target Country? Lam Peng Er (bio) Jing Sun's book Japan and China as Charm Rivals: Soft Power in Regional Diplomacy is impressive and persuasive on at least two counts. First, it gives an excellent and stimulating analysis of soft power as a concept—one that explains its allure, practice, and limitations in international relations. Unlike most accounts of soft power, which focus on the motivations and the charm of a specific actor, Sun is sensitive to the context and history of the target state and society. He convincingly argues that a country's soft power is most appealing if it resonates with the preferences, values, and interests of that target state. Second, Sun's decision to focus on Japan and China allows him to tease out the efficacy of soft power in concrete case studies of states with different regime types. To date, his account is the only one to comprehensively apply the concept to Sino-Japanese relations and those two countries' neighborly relations with Southeast Asia, South Korea, and Taiwan. Especially pleasing is his skill in weaving the theory and praxis of soft power with other factors in international relations such as history, geopolitics, political leadership, and economics. In doing so, Sun offers readers a fresh and balanced perspective on international relations in East Asia—the wielding of the iron fist (hard power) in the velvet glove (soft power). Sun's findings are quite striking. In the case of China, despite its impressive economic growth and the mushrooming of Confucius Institutes abroad, Beijing's charm offensive has been quite limited beyond providing economic aid to states in Northeast and Southeast Asia. As for Japan, despite its colonization of Taiwan, the conquest of Southeast Asia during World War II, and its relative decline after the burst of its bubble economy, the country continues to exude appeal in these localities. Nonetheless, Japanese soft power has been less effective in China and South Korea, beyond popular culture, cuisine, and other commercial spheres. Simply put, charm in a limited consumer sphere does not necessarily translate into political capital. Implicit in Sun's masterly comparison is the notion that Japan's greater appeal in Southeast Asia is in part due to Tokyo's relative success in articulating [End Page 132] the Fukuda Doctrine in 1977 as its official blueprint for relations with that region. The doctrine's tenets include rejecting militarism, affirming Japan's equality with and support for members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and fostering a "heart-to-heart" relationship with these countries. Arguably, the Fukuda Doctrine resonated with Southeast Asian preferences. Unfortunately, there is no "heart-to-heart" relationship between Japan and its two Northeast Asian neighbors, China and South Korea. In particular, the emotional chasm between China and Japan (due to the burden of history) appears unbridgeable. Beijing, for its part, has always affirmed that it supports ASEAN as the driver of East Asian multilateralism, and the Chinese economy is a huge magnet for Southeast Asian trade. However, China's nominally Communist regime (which is still an authoritarian one-party state) and excessive claims to approximately 80% of the South China Sea have severely limited China's charm in Southeast Asia. Though Beijing may be conducting "smile diplomacy," the region is well aware that its giant neighbor has sharp teeth (growing even sharper and longer) and will therefore be wary of all Chinese offensives, hard or soft. Acquiring an aircraft carrier fleet and pressuring Cambodia (the 2012 ASEAN chair) to lean toward Beijing in South China Sea disputes have done little to help China overcome Southeast Asian ambivalence. My only reservation about Sun's superb book is that China and Japan may not be consciously engaging in soft-power competition with each other in South Korea and Southeast Asia, although this does appear to be the case in Taiwan. Tokyo adopted a softer approach toward Southeast Asia after the violent anti-Japanese demonstrations in Bangkok and Jakarta during Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei's visits in 1974. Japan's strategic shift to a good-neighbor policy had little to do with competition with China. In recent years, Beijing and...

The Role of Political Ideas in Multi-Party Elections in Tanzania: Refuting Essentialist Explanations of African Political Systems

Negative assessments of African democracy still dominate the literature, and Tanzania has been described as a ‘hybrid regime’—formally a multi-party democracy where the dominant party, Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM), engages in non-democratic practices to ensure that it remains in power, including the manipulation of electoral processes, and in widespread neopatrimonial practices to protect the position of the political elite. This article is a contribution to the criticism of neo-patrimonial and ‘hybrid-regime’ explanations of the capacity of dominant parties to retain political control in Africa (which rest on essentialist views of African society) and to the broader discussion of the nature of African democracy. It uses an analysis of CCM election manifestoes from the beginning of the multi-party era in 1995, contextualised in a discussion of political events and external perceptions of the party, to examine the emphasis that CCM has placed on the use of political ideas and on its responsiveness to public opinion, rather than using the manipulation of elections and other non-democratic political practices, as would be predicted by neo-patrimonial theory. It argues that CCM used political ideas to hold on to popular support from the beginning of the multipartyera to the 2010 elections, during which period its popularity has fluctuated, while the democratic standards that applied to the running of elections and other aspects of political life in Tanzania have continued to improve. During this time the party developed a legitimacy narrative of which the policies of the one-party state formed a key part, as the ideas that they contained continued to underpin concepts of political community in Tanzania.

A History of Malawi, 1859-1966 by John McCracken

Reviewed by: A History of Malawi, 1859-1966 by John McCracken Joey Power John McCracken , A History of Malawi, 1859-1966. Woodbridge: James Currey and Rochester NY: Boydell and Brewer (hb £85 - 978 1 84701 050 6). 2012, 485 pp. Inspired by John Iliffe's A Modern History of Tanganyika, John McCracken's long-awaited History of Malawi is the first attempt to write a comprehensive synthesis of the modern history of this small but significant Central African country since the 'nation-building' histories of the 1970s. The book weighs in at a whopping 485 pages, covers considerable thematic and chronological ground (its dates are 1859-1966) and integrates a prodigious amount of primary and second material to produce a very readable survey of Malawi's colonial past. The book is divided into sixteen chapters, beginning with the tumultuous nineteenth century and the advent of European missionary enterprise in the region. Subsequent chapters establish the background to the colonial economy and the central roles played by both Islam and Christianity in forging new types of identity and, sometimes, unique forms of political action. There is an entire chapter, for example, that revisits the Chilembwe rising and its significance for Malawian history, with particular emphasis on its millenarian overtones. There are also chapters on the First World War and on the crucial inter-war years [End Page 517] during which economic patterns were established that would endure well into the post-war period -and were to have political significance as land hunger and agrarian reform efforts became the catalysts for rural unrest. Chapters follow on the Depression and how this led to the delay of development initiatives. The book also includes a re-examination of the role of various officials whose development and 'agrarian reform' efforts stoked rural resistance to colonial and ultimately federal overrule. There are thematic chapters on the urban experience, the establishment of colonial administration and the relationship between town and country. The second half of the book is devoted to the years after 1945 during which Malawi's peoples faced one of their greatest political challenges - white settler nationalism and the resulting imposition of the Central African Federation. Opposition to this arguably led to the formation of independent Malawi and a particular brand of politics that, in its focus on the need for unity to achieve national liberation, eventually contributed to the emergence of a one-party state. McCracken touches on the development of party and popular politics, the role of violence in political change, and on the impact of the 1959 State of Emergency on reshaping African resistance to colonial rule. He surveys the trajectory of Malawi's incipient and then aborted labour movement, and the emergence of different factions within the Malawi Congress Party that would ultimately drive post-colonial politics. He does a commendable job of merging archival sources with a growing body of secondary literature on this period and provides considerable insight into the interplay between British and Malawian actors in bringing about a negotiated independence. The book culminates, quite rightly, not with the raising of the flag on 6 July 1964 but with the denouement following the 1964 cabinet crisis and Chipembere's failed rebellion of 1965. McCracken argues that one cannot help but draw parallels between the latter and the Chilembwe revolt of some fifty years before, not just because both rebellions failed but also in the light of their legacies. Each led to new alliances and political and economic power groupings that would endure - in the latter case, until challenged again in the early 1990s. John McCracken has provided a masterful survey of Malawi's modern past, encompassing political, economic and socio-cultural perspectives. A History of Malawi is bound to become the go-to text for students and scholars of colonial Malawi and those interested in the foundations of the post-colonial period. It is sure to have considerable local appeal (one hopes future editions will be more affordable), and must surely become a standard reference for those interested in Malawi's modern history, politics and economics. Joey Power Ryerson University jpower@history.ryerson.ca Copyright © 2013 International African Institute

Hold the Champagne: The Bo Xilai Affair, the Party-State, and the Rule of Law

By way of an analysis of the Bo Xilai Affair, this brief considers how criminal trials of government officials are handled in a one-Party state, where the overlap between the Party and the state is strong and omnipresent. It also examines the interplay in the PRC between the criminal law, and the systems of administrative and Party discipline.

Sierra Leone and the Curse of the One-Party State: Contested Ideas of the Post-Colonial State 1965-1973

This article analyses the contestation among Sierra Leone’s leading politicians, in government and in opposition, over the form of the post-colonial state, with an explanation of their motives behind the move to a single party regime. Regarded for long as a model British colony, Sierra Leone was a promising case, expected to succeed in building a western type democracy. However, it turned to be an example of failed state after its experience with a one party state. Two Sierra Leonean leading politicians, Albert Margai and Siaka Probyn Stevens, had been remarkable nationalist figures since the 1940’s struggling side by side against the coloniser. However, with the coming of independence that friendship turned quickly into fierce enmity where personal animosities and ambitions turned the political arena into a tense atmosphere characterised by doubts and political crisis. Surprisingly, their enmity was responsible for creating the Sierra Leone version of the one party regime. Both leaders held ambivalent attitudes defending the project when in power but fiercely objecting to it when out.

The Hybrid Regime in Post-Civil War Sri Lanka

Following the presidential and parliamentary elections in 2010, the Sri Lankan political system has seen the rise of a ‘one-party dominant state’ and a ‘hybrid regime’. This new political order consists of a mix of democratic and authoritarian elements largely seen in countries such as Malaysia and Singapore. This essay examines the social and political changes introduced by the highly militarized regime led by Mahinda Rajapaksa, which has slanted towards a Kautilyan ideology and authoritarian constitutionalism. It is argued that Sri Lanka needs a glasnost, marking a new political and social ethos based on the principles of accountability, openness, transparency, freedom and justice.