Village Committee Elections in China: Institutionalist Tactics for Democracy

Earlier institutionalist studies in Chinese politics have shown how conservatives and local bureaucrats took advantage of institutional designs in the Leninist system of the People's Republic of China to delay and undermine the implementation of reforms. There has been less discussion of how reformers adapted their strategies to existing institutional constraints to overcome the opposition of conservatives. Using the implementation process of the Organic Law of the Village Committees, this article describes how the reformers adapted to the Chinese institutional setting to promote political reform over opposition at the elite and local levels.

As the case of the village elections shows, the reformers in China designed a strategy to promote reform incrementally. Each step along the way was arranged to appear to be a natural response to the interaction between the initial reform policy and unforeseen consequences brought about by the previous policy. In this process, reformers deliberately manipulated a crucial variable--time--to bring about gradual change in the important actor, that is, the peasants, from spectators into participants, and thereby to change the balance of power between proponents and opponents of the reform. Other political players were also carefully enfranchised at different stages of the implementation process to help reformers in their struggle against conservatives.