Responsive Authoritarianism in China: Land, Protest, and Policy Making by Christopher Heurlin (review)

Without national elections or powerful opposition parties, what makes government in China responsive? How can citizens under authoritarianism influence policy making? Based on in-depth case studies of two of the most explosive issues in contemporary China, land expropriation and housing demolition, Christopher Heurlin provides a dynamic scenario of how protests drive policy changes and digs into the institutional foundation of authoritarian responsiveness: while vertical personnel control gives officials career incentives to be responsive to social demands, the fragmented power structure increases parochialism within the state and makes policy formulation and adaptation much more difficult.

Heurlin argues that China represents a case of responsive authoritarianism as the government "proactively monitors citizen opposition to state policies and selectively responds with policy changes when it gauges opposition to be particularly widespread" (p. 3). In other words, policy responsiveness, alongside repression, is a ruling strategy used to ensure regime survival. There are three steps, signaling, conflicting, and compromising, that link protests with policy response. First, protests and petitions send warning signals about a burning issue to officials in both local and central governments, which affects agenda-setting. Second, the impact of these signals on policy making is mediated by officials' career incentives under the nomenklatura system. Bearing different duties and responsibilities, officials in local governments and central ministries assign different priorities to sometimes conflicting goals, such as maintaining social stability and fostering economic development. This results in differing levels of responsiveness to different issues by local and central governments. Third, when policy initiatives are discussed in the two major decision-making institutions, the State Council (SC) and the National People's Congress (NPC), ministries in favor of policy change usually have greater say in the former, while local governments that are generally opposed to change have a greater say in the later.

To illustrate the interactions between protesters, local officials, central officials, and top leaders, Heurlin examines the burning issues of land expropriation and housing demolition. Since the 1990s, expropriation policies have harmed the interests of landless farmers by dispossessing them of their most valuable assets and leaving them poor, unemployed, and without a social security net, often with no other recourse but protests. Similarly, urban evictees have often been left in similar dire straits and used protests to fight against low compensation, remote resettlement, and forcible demolitions. At the local level, landless farmers and evictees can use conventional petitions, become "nail households" (釘子戶 dingzihu), or resort to more disruptive tactics like traffic blockage, protests, and collective petitions to defend their rights. Local government can also react by ignoring, repressing, or responding to citizens' demands, according to the potential costs of each strategy. Heurlin then discusses the complex interaction between local officials, central officials, and top leaders. Officials are evaluated yearly on their ability to meet policy goals set by higher levels of government, such as economic growth. Expropriation of land has been a common tactic of local governments to raise needed revenues, to finance unfunded central spending mandates, or to drive local economic growth. However, since local protests and mobilization may signal social instability and leader incompetence in the eyes of top leaders, local leaders are incentivized to modify policy to respond to popular complaints. Localities with stronger fiscal capacity are generally more "able" to adapt policy to local demands. Accordingly, statistical models suggest that the introduction of the social security system was sped up by higher levels of petitions and richer fiscal resources.

Heurlin differentiates between two types of political agencies, local governments and ministries, and arenas, the SC and the NPC, exemplifying a fragmented power structure that affects authoritarian responsiveness. The Chinese state, he argues, is not monolithic, but consists of different provinces and ministries with their own interests. Allies come and go as policy domains and battlefields change. Generally speaking, ministries targeted by protesters are more likely to initiate policy reforms, such as the social security reform, as a means of reducing social unrest. However...