Political Reform in Post-Mao China: Democracy and Bureaucracy in a Leninist State PDF
Preview Political Reform in Post-Mao China: Democracy and Bureaucracy in a Leninist State
Political Reform in Post-Mao China This One XHD2-BN3-X1BG • • • e orm tn • tna Democracy and Bureaucracy in a Leninist State Barrett L. McCorn1ick UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Oxford Berkeley Los Angeles • • University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. Oxford, England 1990 by © The Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data McCormick, Barrett L. Political reform in post-Mao China : democracy and bureaucracy in a Leninist state Barrett McCormick. I L. p. em. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-520-06765-7 (alk. paper) 1 . China-Politics and government-1976- 2. China-Economic policy-1976- 3. Communist state. I. Title. JQ1502.M34 1990 95 1 .05'7-dc20 89-20440 CIP Printed in the United States of America 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 The paper used in this publication meets the m1mmum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library • n @ Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. for democracy Contents • Preface IX Introduction 1 27 1. The Shan hai Commune and the Nan·in Incident 2. 60 Patrimonial Rulership in China's Leninist State 3. Strengthening Socialist Law 94 130 4. Elections to Local People's Congresses 5. Party Rectification 157 191 Conclusion 203 Select Bibliography Index 2.19 Preface To explore the prospects for reform in China, I have developed in this book a theory of Leninist states. Theories of the state are by now prevalent in the study of comparative politics. Their chief attraction is that they allow for the autonomy of politics. Politics is not just a re flection of economics, is not subject to the dictates of economic mod ernization, is not just class struggle, and is not just a set of cultural values enacted in a public sphere. Politics, political leaders, and polit ical institutions are connected to these spheres and more, but they also respond to their own imperatives. It is doubly attractive to apply theories of the state to the most autonomous type of state, a Leninist state. By "autonomous" I mean that Leninist states tend to respond to their own needs and are rela tively able to avoid being constrained by social demands. In their first decades, the Chi nese and Soviet Leninist states were able to mount cataclysmic revolutions from above and were often dominated by in dividual leaders' cults of personality. More recently, individual leaders have been more constrained by state institutions, but Leninist state institutions have maintained the autonomy of the state and are also relatively able to escape social constraints. Part of the work of this book has been broadly comparative, to analyze what makes Leninist states different from other kinds of states. It is ironic that most of the literature on the autonomy of states has been wr itten about liberal-capitalist states, which in comparative . IX Preface X terms are surrounded by a dense and active civil society and hence are among the most constrained states. In contrast, the comprehensive vertical hierarchies of Leninist state institutions constrain and confine society, leaving state leaders and state institutions relatively free to respond to their own agendas. I have also analyzed what constitutes a Leninist state and have de veloped an argument about the nature of Leninist rulership that helps to explain the autonomy of Leninist institutions. In this I have drawn most of my inspiration from Max Weber's ideal types and, in partic ular, his concept of patrimonial rulership. I argue that the structure of Chinese units makes people personally dependent on their leadership and inhibits the autonomy of society. At the same time, patrimonial state bureaucracy dilutes official purposes and resists reforms im posed from above. In discussing Leninist rulership, I have tried to make frequent references to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe to make this book as comparative as possible. I have also endeavored to build an argument that would make sense to Chinese intellectuals. To accomplish this, I have tried to com prehend Chinese understandings and incorporate them into my argu I ment. have searched for k indred understandings, particularly from Eastern Europeans. I have tried to cast these arguments in the terms and traditions of Western social science and have therefore used a lan guage that is not readily comprehensible. Nonetheless, I still hope that the basic argument, stripped of its jargon, will make sense to Chinese, although most would reject major points. The tension in this analysis comes from two sources. First, while Leninist states may dominate society, they have never completely ab sorbed or eliminated society. Instead, decades of violence and coer cion, limited economic achievements, and the widespread use of of ficial position for private gain have alienated society from the Chi nese, East European, and Russian states. In ordinary times the state may be able to suppress and mask these tensions, but in moments of crisis like those described in chapter 1 or the crisis of the spring of 1989, they give stark testimony to the depth of conflict between the state and society. While the existence of a deep conflict between state and society is a fundamental premise of my argument, I have analyzed only how society is shaped and limited by Leninist rulership. There is certainly more to Chinese society than can be seen through an analy sis of the Chinese state, but it is beyond the scope of this work to provide an autonomous explanation of Chinese society.
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