The political system of the People's Republic of China is quasi-parliamentary, but dominated by a single communist party. For decades, congresses in mainland China were dismissed as "rubber stamps" and congress delegates as "regime agents." This characterization appears no longer accurate: recent studies find that congresses are important political players. The most lively congresses are found not at the top of the system in Beijing, but in the localities. This project collects and analyzes data on congresses at provincial, municipal, county, and township levels to draw generalizable inferences about how and how much local congresses and congress delegates act as agents of democratization. Specifically, it will answer the following question: to what extent do actions, attitudes, and broad values of local congress delegates represent the views and interests of the ordinary Chinese citizens who elect them? In so doing, the project will address a finding of previous studies that local congressional development is not proto-democratic. It will also resolve differences in previous studies about the cooperative or confrontational relationship between congresses and other political institutions, that is, how much congress delegates also act as agents of local governments and communist party committees.
Previous studies of local congresses and congress delegates are based on qualitative fieldwork, which have not provided reliable, generalizable answers to key questions about the political significance of congresses and their likely future impact on Chinese political development. This project collects data on elections of congress delegates and governments at provincial, municipal, county, and township levels in five provinces. It also surveys congress delegates in the selected localities. Administrative and survey data are merged with more readily available economic data from statistical yearbooks. Sample sizes and sample selection principles permit statistical analysis to produce conclusions that can be broadly generalized to yield answers about prospects for mainland Chinese democratization.
Beyond its intellectual merit, this project will have broader impact. It will bring together scholars with different opportunities and skills, but a shared commitment to reliable quantitative empirical research, in a new partnership with the principal investigator. It will foster collaborations with Chinese political scientists in the universities and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Finally, findings from this project will contribute to a nuanced understanding by American policy makers of the impact on political development of ostensibly representative institutions and the representatives elected to them in mainland China.
