Authoritarian and Democratic Pathways To Meritocracy in China

7
Authoritarian and Democratic Pathways

to Meritocracy in China
Baogang He and Mark E. Warren
7.1 introduction
Western liberal democracies confront growing crises of legitimation, from
policy gridlock and growing inequality to the rise of populists with
authoritarian instincts. Some have wondered whether China provides
a superior example of good government. China’s remarkable achieve-
ments in economic growth, poverty reduction, and rapid development
may suggest the secret to its success might lie in the creative combination
of older traditions of Chinese thought, particularly Confucian meritoc-
racy, with the organizational apparatus of the modern developmental
state, precisely a strong Party-State, a model that arguably found earlier
success in Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore.1 Daniel Bell has recently argued
that the “China Model” of political meritocracy, suitably refined, offers
an appealing alternative to Western electoral democracies.2 Using its
authoritarian powers in Confucian ways, he claims, the Chinese
Communist Party has been able to ensure merit in the selection of top-
level political leaders and encourage responsiveness to the people, while
absorbing and controlling political demand by experimenting with
democracy at local levels.
In this chapter, we question the theoretical contrast between liberal
democracy and political meritocracy that often frames comparisons
between the developed democracies and China. Meritocracy, we argue,
is not a regime type at all, as Joseph Chan and Franz Mang also argue in
We thank Melissa Williams for the insightful and constructive comments that helped us to
refine the arguments in this chapter.
174
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Birmingham, on 11 Apr 2020 at 16:41:02, subject to the Cambridge Core
terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108635042.008
Authoritarian and Democratic Pathways to Meritocracy 175
Chapter 6 of this volume.3 Rather, meritocracy expresses the ideal that

officeholders and decision-makers should hold their positions of authority
by virtue of their talent, knowledge, character, and judgment. In contrast,
concepts of regime types turn on the question of who has the power to
select officeholders and to hold them accountable. Today’s polities typi-
cally exhibit just two general regime types: authoritarianism, in which
elites hold this power; and democracy, in which the power to authorize
rulers and hold them to account belongs to the people. In order to con-
ceptually compare China to Western liberal democracies, we should not
distinguish between meritocracy and authoritarianism or between mer-
itocracy and democracy but rather between authoritarian meritocracy
and democratic meritocracy. As ideal types, each thematizes different
conceptions of merit and deploys distinct methods of selection and pro-
cedures for institutionalizing meritocratic values, ideas we develop in
Section 7.3.
In Section 7.4, we develop the distinction between authoritarian
and democratic meritocracy. We also note that in practice both
Western liberal democracies and the Chinese Communist Party’s
(CCP) version of authoritarian rule are mixed regimes that combine
democratic practices of elite selection with top-down authoritarian
ones. In the case of China, we show how the pressures to maintain
a high level of performance (output) legitimacy, measured mainly in
economic terms, have generated a political demand for both merito-
cratic and democratic institutional innovations within a regime that
remains authoritarian.
Section 7.4 focuses on two of these innovations, highlighting their
unusual and distinctive combinations of authoritarian and democratic
meritocracy, mostly (but not exclusively) at the local level of governance.
The “three ticket” and “public nomination–direct election” systems,
which emerged as responses to dysfunctions in local elections, are creative
combinations of top-down elite selection and democratic election. These
innovations are emerging alongside a wide range of deliberative and
consultative practices in China’s governance processes, which serve, in
part, to provide elites with the information they need to make better
decisions. Many of these innovations, if governed by norms of transpar-
ency and public accountability, might be instructive models of democratic
meritocracy that could address pathologies of democratic decision-
making in other contexts.
We conclude in Section 7.5 by noting features of Chinese political
experimentation that tend to strengthen authoritarianism while
176 Baogang He and Mark E. Warren
undermining the meritocratic and democratic elements in the institutional

mix. These weaknesses of regime hybridity as it has played out in China,
however, should not obscure the genuine innovativeness of its institu-
tional experiments or their potential to inform or inspire new forms of
democratic meritocracy.
While our chapter is not a direct reflection on comparative political
theory, we hope to be practicing one of its many possibilities and genres.
Here we draw on the long-standing practice in Western political theory
and comparative politics of characterizing political regimes through ideal
types. We do so because it offers two kinds of comparative opportunities.
One leverages generalization: since Plato, regime typologies have been
built around the question of rule – that is, where the power to organize and
make collective decisions is located, whether in the one (monarchy), the
few (aristocracy), or the many (democracy). Here we work with just two
regime types – democracy and authoritarianism – which mark the end
points of a continuum from widely dispersed to narrowly concentrated
political power. The question that motivates these ideal types generalizes
across contexts because it is deeply existential: it focuses the question of
who and where power is located to make decisions about how one is to
live one’s life, looking forward, together with others. Because of its
normative centrality, this question should be asked of any polity, regard-
less of time or place. In our case, this question allows us to look with
skepticism on claims that China is distinctively non-Western, so much so
(it is sometimes claimed) that the very categories of democracy and
authoritarianism do not apply. Such claims are almost always ideological,
justifying what are, in fact, authoritarian concentrations of power that can
deeply damage people’s capacities to choose and control their lives, indi-
vidually and collectively. In this respect, our method intersects with the
chapters in this volume that emphasize cross-boundary conversations
about normative questions that can pierce the ideological conceits and
strategies of those who hold power.4
But, second, while Western regime typologies are too abstract to map
directly onto any regime, this is doubly so in the case of China. Here our
method aligns with those chapters in this volume that emphasize close
attention to specific practices and contexts. When we do, we find that,
although regime-type categories help us to sharpen normative questions,
the Chinese have devised institutions and practices that fuse the traditions
of Confucian meritocracy with both authoritarian and democratic loca-
tions of power, depending upon policies, places, and levels of government.
We will simply not see these practices if we abstractly impose Western
regime-type categories. What we find are a number of uniquely Chinese

innovations in designing merit-based considerations into decision proce-
dures, as we will document.
7.2 meritocracy versus democracy?

In Western political thought, democracy and meritocracy have had an
uneasy relationship since Plato cast democracy as the rule of the appetites
unchecked by reason and made his case for the rule of philosophers based
on their dedication to seeking truth. In today’s developed democracies,
institutions are now highly differentiated, so that democratic and merito-
cratic principles of elite selection coexist. Early justifications of represen-
tative democracy rested on the claim that elections would select a “natural
aristocracy” from among the citizenry.5 In China, meritocratic ideals are
equally ancient, with roots in Confucian thought (also in other schools of
thought), which has always counseled that leaders should possess both the
knowledge and the virtue appropriate to their positions. Confucian ideals
were institutionalized in the imperial examination system, which origi-
nated in the Han Dynasty (206 bce–220 ce) and were transformed into
a comprehensive system of elite selection down to the local level during the
Tang Dynasty (ad 618–907).6 Developing these Confucian ideals in The
China Model, Daniel Bell identifies the three qualities of good leaders:
they should have high intellectual abilities, good social skills, and moral
virtue. These are the qualities of good leaders that, on Bell’s account, the
CCP has institutionalized (albeit imperfectly) in their peer ranking and
selection systems.
Bell’s three criteria nicely identify the kinds of knowledge and character
that comprise political merit. He omits, however, a crucial piece of any
theory of meritocracy. Merit (which refers to qualities of knowledge and
judgment) always interacts with regime (which is about where powers of
selection and decision reside and how they are organized). This question is
hidden, conceptually speaking, because Bell treats “meritocracy” as the
regime type and “democracy” as a modification of this regime type.7 But
while “democracy” tells us where power is located, “meritocracy” does
not. The conceptual cost is that Bell overlooks the crucial question as to
how power relationships can support or undermine merit in governance.
Disaggregating the questions of merit and regime type allows us to
identify the strengths and weaknesses of authoritarian and democratic
systems as pathways to merit in governance. The kind of regime structures
the incentives of decision-makers to use their expertise and virtues on
behalf of those they rule, as well as affecting the sources and kinds of
knowledge and judgment that count as meritorious. By distinguishing
questions of regime from those of merit, we can develop the concepts of
authoritarian meritocracy and democratic meritocracy. With these tools,
we analyze the nature and place of merit in China under CCP rule. Our
analysis is summarized in Table 7.1.
With respect to the question of regime type (columns, Table 7.1), we
ask whether powers to select rulers (or authorize rulers) and hold rulers
accountable for their decisions are narrowly or widely distributed. The
more narrowly distributed, the more authoritarian the regime; the more
widely distributed, the more democratic the regime. The location of
power tells us something important about two other kinds of question
that are central to democratic theory. First, it identifies key incentives
that rulers have to attend to the interests and values of those they rule.
The more authoritarian, the fewer such incentives rulers will have; the
more democratic, the more incentives. All other things being equal, for
example, democratic elections for rulers institutionalize incentives to
attend to the people. These kinds of incentives are weaker in authoritar-
ian regimes. They are not absent, as even authoritarian rulers require
legitimacy in order to function. Moreover, cultures can sometimes pro-
vide incentives beyond institutional organizations of power. China’s
legacy of Confucian culture directs rulers to attend to the good of the
people and to consult with the people when answers to collective con-
cerns are unknown.8 Importantly, Confucian culture and values also
permit the people to petition, to protest, and perhaps even to revolt
against bad rulers.9 In addition, Maoist China inculcated the “mass
line” (qunzhong luxian) into party members, a doctrine that emphasized
the wisdom of the people as well as the duties of leaders to consult with
them.
The second important feature of regime types with respect to merit is
that the location of power affects information and communication,
always key to organizing collective actions. Authoritarian regimes tend
to have poor channels of communication between the people and rulers as
they typically suppress or strictly limit the spaces necessary for public
opinion to develop and to be expressed. Democratic regimes tend to have
multiple pathways for the formation and expression of public opinion:
election campaigns, media-rich public spheres, and advocacy organiza-
tions, as well as the many deliberative bodies that are designed into
democratic institutions. Because regime type affects how communication
operates and information circulates, it also affects the bases of judgments
t ab le 7. 1 Support for merit-based governance by regime type
Knowledge/ judgment Regime Type

basis for merit
Authoritarian meritocracy Democratic meritocracy
(China: “collective leadership,” (competitive elections, free speech/
professional bureaucracies, association, protest, professional
Non-constitutional some protected knowledge- bureaucracies, protected knowl-
monarchy, dictatorship based institutions) edge-based institutions)
Technical knowledge/ Weak (concentrated power Strong to mixed (examination- Strong to mixed (highly differentiated
merit overrides technical merit) based and peer selection, locations of merit; but no merit-
differentiated merit-based based qualifications for elected
institutions; but power can office; electoral penalties for gross
override merit) mismanagement)
Moral judgment Weak (concentrated power, Mixed (concentrated power Strong to mixed (strong public spheres
(“virtue”) weak communication distorts moral judgments, but highlight moral issues; but publicity
distorts moral judgments) multiple channels of incentives can undermine elected
communication) leaders’ moral judgment)
Political judgment Weak (few incentives to Mixed (concentrated power can Strong (electoral incentives for
attend to collective distort political judgments, coalition-building and inclusion;
interests; weak mitigated by multiple channels electoral and veto-based penalties

communication) of communication) for misjudgment)
about merit. Contra Bell, political merit is not a property of individuals for
which they can be “selected,” but arises from the interaction of individual
traits with political processes, especially the information- and communi-
cation-rich processes characteristic of democracies.
Finally, although we have simplified the range of regimes with the
binary “authoritarian versus democratic,” there are of course many vari-
eties of authoritarian rule, just as there are many kinds of democracy.
Classically authoritarian regimes are hereditary monarchies, theocracies,
and personal dictatorships without constitutional limits on rule or rule
shared with other political entities such as parliaments. China’s model is
quite distinct, comprised of one-party rule and collective leadership,
combined with a very large party membership (about 90 million as of
July, 2019), multiple layers of government, and institutions that separate
executive, legislative, judicial, and military functions, all knit together
through the CCP. Democratic mechanisms exist within the Chinese
regime, including elections and deliberative processes, although mainly
at local levels. These structures provide for more communication and
internal checks on power than typical of authoritarian regimes. That
said, power remains monopolized by the CCP, and President Xi Jinping
has been consolidating power in ways not seen since the era of Mao
Zedong.
The rows in Table 7.1 identify kinds of knowledge and judgment bases
for merit and their interactions with regime types. Our distinctions are
roughly parallel to Bell’s distinctions between intellectual ability, virtue,
and political knowledge.10 We emphasize, however, the extent to which
the possession and use of knowledge, particularly good moral and poli-
tical judgment, depends on communication with other human beings,
which must be both protected by and organized into political regimes to
have an impact on governance.
What we are calling technical knowledge (Table 7.1, row 1) is the kind
that is least dependent upon communication with others: science, technol-
ogy, engineering, and mathematics. These are the kinds of knowledge best
tested by examination, and they are easiest to design into institutions of
government. Nonetheless, technical knowledge, and the kinds of merit it
reflects, require protection from political and religious interference, as
well as means for integrating it into collective decisions. Purely author-
itarian regimes (theocracies, monarchies, and dictatorships) tend to view
independent inquiries as threats and lack motivations to support any form
of technical knowledge that does not directly enhance their power. In
contrast, democracies tend to protect technical knowledge by providing
spaces where it can be generated, such as universities and research orga-

nizations, businesses that depend upon technical knowledge for perfor-
mance, and professional bureaucracies. Elected leaders, particularly
populist politicians, may not appreciate these kinds of knowledge-based
merit, but, where ignoring expertise produces policy failures that impact
electorates, they have some incentives to protect technical merit. China’s
“collective leadership” model, system of universities, and examination-
based systems for selecting offices combine with a heavy dependence upon
performance legitimacy to favor technical merit.
Good moral judgment (Table 7.1, row 2) is more complex. To the
degree that good moral judgment is about more than applying received
wisdom or religious codes, it depends both upon interaction with others,
so as to understand their wants, needs, and perspectives, and upon incen-
tives to act morally. Unlike technical knowledge, good moral judgment is
difficult to test by examination, as it is more likely to depend upon
discursive interactions with others accompanied by reciprocity and
respect, particularly those potentially affected by such judgments. Good
moral judgment is unlikely to be found among leaders of purely author-
itarian regimes, as concentrated power tends to suppress the voices of
those without power, undermines respect and reciprocity, and provides
few incentives for leaders to act attentively to others. In authoritarian
regimes, opportunities and incentives for corruption abound, usually
unchecked by institutional constraints. In contrast, democracies tend to
be more robust in underwriting moral judgment, as they usually have
strong public spheres that enable moral debate and discourse and some-
times even specialized institutions for deliberation in policy areas that
raise moral issues in unsettled areas, such as genomics. They also institu-
tionalize preventive measures against corruption.11 In short, relative to
authoritarian regimes, democracies tend to provide the information and
communication as well as the incentives necessary for good moral judg-
ment. These strengths, however, can be undermined by strategic electoral
incentives, which can motivate partial positions and policies that pander
to, and sometimes amplify, constituents’ moral weaknesses, although
good electoral system design can mitigate these effects.12
China represents a complex case in these respects. On the one hand, the
authoritarian structure of government will tend to weaken the incentives
necessary for good moral judgment – evidenced in China’s consistently
poor ranking on comparative measures of corruption. It suffers from
a weak, highly controlled public sphere, meaning that the voices and
perspectives of people not included in the CCP have few protected
channels of communication. On the other hand, there are more resources

for good moral judgment in China than in most authoritarian regimes.
Insofar as Chinese political culture is informed by Confucian ethics and
the Maoist mass line, leaders and officials have reason to look outward,
toward those they affect. Traditions of rightful resistance and petition
mean that there is more information about how policies affect people, and
more incentives to pay attention, than a purely authoritarian model would
predict.13 Democratic and deliberative structures, found mostly at local
levels of government, help to provide checks on corruption and informa-
tion necessary for good moral judgment, enabling otherwise authoritarian
institutions to benefit from some of the strengths of democracy.14
Finally, good political judgment (Table 7.1, row 3) follows a similar
logic, with the key distinction being that it requires balancing moral
reasoning with strategic and instrumental considerations. As with moral
judgment, “merit” in leadership is not just an individual quality; rather,
institutions need to underwrite and protect expressions of opinions and
perspectives of those who are ruled, attend to the constraints and possi-
bilities of science and technology, and create incentives for leaders to
attend to these resources. In contemporary, post-conventional, pluralistic
contexts, the most important political judgments depend upon the norms
that people create and justify to one another. Moreover, knowing the
needs and interests of a collectivity depends upon the privileged knowl-
edge that individuals have of their own interests. Knowledge of interests,
needs, and perspectives requires not only that people be asked about what
they prefer but also that people understand how their preferences relate to
those of others. Political judgments that wrap all of these kinds of con-
siderations together count as “meritorious” only to the degree that people
recognize, understand, and accept them.
Democracies tend to protect these sources of deliberation and judg-
ment and to institutionalize electoral penalties for ignoring them. It is true
that elections create incentives for pandering, deception, and other pathol-
ogies. We may be tempted to imagine that a good leader, freed of the
strategic pressures of elections, would be unencumbered by these pathol-
ogies. Yet there are very few examples of autocrats that are both well-
informed and well-motivated. Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew was the
exception that proves the rule, and even in Singapore authoritarian mer-
itocracy has produced its own pathologies.15 The rarity of well-motivated
autocrats is inherent in authoritarian regimes, which lack not just the
incentives for political merit but also the institutionalized conduits for
voice and public opinion that make good political judgment possible.
China departs from a purely authoritarian pattern in some important

ways. Although meritorious political leadership is handicapped by author-
itarianism and one-party rule, China mitigates the inherent problems with
authoritarian rule through collective leadership focused on performance
legitimacy and decentralized governance that can be attentive to public
demand, often through public consultation and deliberation that seems to
result in a distinctively responsive form of authoritarianism.16 In our view,
however, the problem for China going forward is evident in Table 7.1:
China will need to retain its strengths in selecting for merit in technical
knowledge, while democratizing in ways that underwrite merit among
leaders in moral and political judgment.
7.3 mixed regimes: institutionally differentiated

meritocratic systems
Political systems that include merit-based considerations – as do all high-
performing political systems – typically distribute them across branches,
agencies, and levels of government while protecting merit-based organiza-
tions outside of government. The developed democracies are dense with
merit-based considerations in both the selection of personnel and processes
of governing. As Bell briefly acknowledges, the developed democracies
design meritocracy into their administrative and judicial branches.17 The
older developed democracies began to separate elected parts of government
from judiciaries as early as the eighteenth century, while professional, merit-
based administration evolved in the late nineteenth century in forms that
protected most staff in ministries and agencies from patronage-based corrup-
tion and other political pressures – a dynamic that was driven largely by the
performance demands of capitalism and war.18 Even the “political”
branches of government – legislatures and elected executives – have profes-
sional staff, while elected legislators specialize through their legislative com-
mittee assignments. Bureaucratic organizations are, of course, hierarchical
and even authoritarian in electoral democracies, on the theory that they
should work to execute the directions of elected branches of government.
In these arrangements, (bureaucratic) authoritarianism can hobble good
moral and political judgment. Remarkably, Max Weber identified these
limitations quite explicitly in his 1918 essay, “Parliament and Government
in a Reconstructed Germany,” in which he argues that bureaucratic leader-
ship after Bismarck had caused irresponsible drift into World War I,
a disaster for Germany.19 This kind of irresponsibility, he argued, is inherent
in (authoritarian) bureaucracy precisely because this form of organization
lacks the kinds of communication and debate necessary for politically mer-
itorious decisions. What was lacking in Germany “was the direction of the
state by a politician – not by a political genius . . . not even by a great political
talent, but simply by a politician.”20 That is, good political judgment is not
an individual quality but rather one produced by the institution of parlia-
mentary democracy. For reasons such as those identified by Weber, the
developed democracies not only seek to ensure legislative supremacy over
bureaucracy but also increasing use of quasi-democratic (consultative and
sometimes deliberative) processes within bureaucracies themselves to intro-
duce good political judgment into administrative rulemaking.21
Judiciaries are also typically protected from political interference and
staffed by trained professionals. Political considerations usually combine
with merit in high court appointments and top law enforcement positions,
but professional qualifications still limit the pools from which appoint-
ments are made to those who are at least nominally qualified. Within
judiciaries, meritorious decisions depend on elaborate procedures of advo-
cacy and argument. Sometimes the power of judgment rests with juries of
lay citizens (particularly in common law jurisdictions), recognizing that
even professionals selected for their merit will lack, qua individuals, the
information and deliberation they need to make equitable judgments.
Merit-based considerations are also divided among levels of govern-
ment in the developed democracies, with higher levels of government
generally more competitive and demanding. Finally, the liberal constitu-
tional structures of the developed democracies protect non-state entities
from political interference. Universities, firms, nongovernmental organi-
zations and associations can each define “merit” as necessary for their
functions and purposes: seeking and conveying knowledge (universities),
making a profit (firms), or pursuing distinctive purposes or causes (NGOs
and associations). In contrast, authoritarian states oversee non-state enti-
ties, usually prioritizing political loyalty over merit.
In short, the developed democracies differentiate multiple domains of
collective decision, with different kinds of merit enabled across a variety
of domains. In practice, of course, the distributions are not always neat or
fully functional. But when the political oversight of elected officials crosses
boundaries – say, when there is political inference with judicial due
process – we do not call it “democracy” working against “meritocracy”
but rather “corruption”22 or “injustice,”23 which count as two kinds of
damage to democracy.
We find functionally similar differentiations and distributions of merit-
based considerations in China. While the established democracies were
built on processes that began to differentiate domains of merit centuries

ago, such processes in China are relatively recent. One of the destructive
legacies of Maoism was the extent to which it elevated political loyalty,
even fervor, over those merit-based institutions that survived the revolu-
tion. The CCP began to reintroduce merit-based processes in the 1980s,
no doubt because their performance-based legitimacy depended upon it,
particularly with respect to poverty reduction. Within the space of a few
decades, the CCP established some predictable property rights to enable
profit-oriented development; began to establish some actionable rights for
citizens; increased the independence of universities while introducing
academic performance metrics; sorted government departments by func-
tion; introduced intraparty elections and peer review; began to subject
state-owned enterprises to competition; and rehabilitated those features
of the Confucian tradition that emphasized merit. The CCP has prioritized
merit in leadership selection, which has in turn produced smart and
effective economic leadership and management.24
In short, China’s leaders seem to be using their authoritarian powers to
establish meritocratic governance,25 which certainly accounts for a good
part of China’s impressive economic performance. Most Chinese citizens
recognize these achievements, and the regime enjoys markedly higher
levels of public trust than most liberal democracies.26 The evidence for
meritocratic leadership selection, however, is mixed. One survey finds that
2,500 Chinese officials report greater meritocracy than their counterparts
in the United States.27 Another survey, however, found that the United
States outperforms China with respect to citizen perceptions of merit in
leadership.28 An empirical study of the career of 1,250 top Chinese
executives finds that their chance of promotion is likely to be increased
through their political connections as well as their administrative
experience.29 And yet another study finds that the promotion of higher
party ranks was not related to performance at all.30
This said, there are functional reasons to think that the CCP will need
to place an increasing premium on considerations of merit – not just
technical but also moral and political. China’s rapid economic growth
has produced structural changes that are generating new political chal-
lenges for governance. These include the pluralization of sources of state
revenue, which effectively increases the political bargaining power of
those who control the means of production, and the increasing economic
value of labor that comes with development, which effectively increases
the bargaining powers of those classes whose labor is in demand. These
have three important implications for merit-based governance. First, they
produce functional pressures for governance that is sufficiently competent

to maintain a continuing high level of economic performance. Second,
they produce a functional demand for the rule of law that is stable and
predictable enough to enable and encourage economic entrepreneurship
in quasi-market contexts. Third, they lead to functional pressures to
manage increasing levels of political complexity, as the CCP cannot con-
trol through authoritarian means all of the forces and potential political
problems that economic development unleashes.31
These developments have pushed the CCP to experiment with a variety
of mixed systems that include elements of authoritarianism, meritocracy,
and local democracy, aimed primarily at channeling suppressed popular
sentiments and demands, while building capacities to solve daily problems
before they grow into mass discontents that might endanger the regime.
More recently, however, the Xi regime has been scaling back the demo-
cratic dimensions of political experimentation, but it reintroduced some
experiments in public nomination again in 2019.32
7.4 mixed models of local democratic

meritocracy
As the CCP has introduced meritocratic criteria into governance, it has
distributed and differentiated locations of merit in ways that are compar-
able to those that have evolved in the developed democracies. The system
remains authoritarian, generating what we are calling an “authoritarian
meritocracy” – but one in which democratic elements play a moderate role,
potentially pointing toward democratic meritocracy. In the following sec-
tions, we describe two kinds of experiments that seek to reconcile the CCP’s
authoritarian leadership with both meritocracy and local democracy.
7.4.1 Leader-Selection Systems: The “Three Ticket” and “Public

Nomination–Direct Election” Models
Under CCP rule, China has used and blended two contrasting systems to
select political leaders, one Leninist authoritarian and the other democratic.
The Leninist system involves CCP nominations, examinations, and appoint-
ments from the top and encompasses most high-level offices. Village elections,
institutionalized in the 1990s, select leaders (though usually from within CCP
members) through competitions for the votes of village citizens.33
The experiments we discuss here mix these two systems, as indicated in
Table 7.2. They respond to problems that arose from direct elections of
t ab le 7 . 2 Typology of appointment systems
Leninist Public
Appointment Recommendation
System and Direct Elections Direct Elections
Methods Top-down, The combination of Bottom-up

organizational
top-down and
nomination bottom-up, public
nomination
Participants Party Party organization, Voters
organization plus ordinary
citizens, and
elected deputies
Process Party nomination, Public nomination, Open nomination
examination, cultural and competitive
and examination, elections
appointment interviews, party
organizational
review, votes cast
by party
committee
members
Degree of political Very little Limited competition Full competition
competition
village-level leaders, as well as part of a more general strategy to undergird

the legitimacy of CCP with competent leadership. Village elections brought
problems of pandering and voting-based forms of corruption familiar in
electoral democracies. Those who aim to gain more votes tend to become
politically cowardly, often giving up on good government for fear of hurting
or offending voters, and more and more officials attempted to buy votes.34
While officials were usually seeking to increase their legitimacy by increasing
both electoral participation and their own vote shares, their tactics were
often corrupt and undermined the effectiveness of leadership. Xi Jinping,
during the time he was the party secretary of Zhejiang Province before
ascending to national office, identified this common problem in an article
entitled “Not to Be a Cadre Who Can Win All Votes.”35 Elections also
grated against a traditional Chinese principle that officials may not hold
a position in their place of origin – a principle justified by merit, but which
functioned to ensure that officials’ loyalties would align with the central
hierarchy rather than local attachments.36
To address such issues, Chinese officials have modified local elections

by introducing “three-ticket” and “public nomination–direct election”
systems, which combine democratic election and official appointment
systems. The three-ticket system was invented by local officials in
Zhengzhou city and involves a public nomination vote, a quality assess-
ment ballot, and a final competitive election.37 This system applies to all
Zhengzhou city cadres above the departmental level and all county-level
city cadres above the section level. The first step of the selection process is
a democratic recommendation meeting, where the public nominates ten
candidates by anonymous ballot. The second step is a quality assessment
by an expert panel, which determines the short list of the candidates.
A party standing committee (which could be understood as a kind of
“electoral college”) then votes for two candidates from the short-listed
candidates. Finally, the whole party committee decides the winner
through a vote. All three ballots are secret, and the results are not made
public.38
The “public nomination–direct election” (gongtuai zhixuan) system
has two steps.39 First, public nomination offers citizens an opportunity
to nominate candidates for party secretaries of local governments and
gives citizens the first opportunity to weigh in on potential candidates. The
methods vary, from casting votes to filling in an evaluation form with
a scale of scores. The function of this public recommendation is to screen
out unpopular leaders who cannot earn public support.40 Second, party
members elect the party secretaries of local governments through intra-
party elections. In some experiments, there are two rounds of intraparty
elections, with ordinary party members casting votes to narrow down
a list of candidates, followed by the standing committee of local party
organizations (a small group of local elites) holding a final vote.
The public nomination–direct election was first tested in Pingchang,
in Sichuan province, then in several places in Jiangsu province.41 It has
spread from township to city (e.g., in Shenzhen city, the Party
Secretary of the Department of Civic Affairs was appointed through
public nomination and direct elections in 2009) and slowly to national
governmental posts. The system is often used for administrative posi-
tions as well. For example, all deputy heads of departments in the
Beijing city government must go through this process.42 This experi-
ment has been reproduced across China in all sectors, including for the
leaders of cities, counties, townships, universities, schools, and even
state-owned enterprises. In contrast, direct elections held for township
heads, the first being in Buyun in 1998, have spread to only a few
other places, as it is regarded by the CCP as being incompatible with

the Chinese political system, and thus has not been promoted
nationally.43
The “three-ticket” and “public nomination–direct election” systems have
expanded popular participation in both nominating and vetoing candidates.
In the past, only the Organization Department of the CCP had a right to
nominate candidates. Now, citizens also have the power to nominate
through a “confidence” or “nomination” vote or to screen out unpopular
candidates though evaluation forms. That said, citizens’ votes have varying
weights in different forms of experiments and in different places. For exam-
ple, in intraparty elections of party secretaries at the township level, citizens’
evaluations determine 30 percent of the outcome, competency tests another
30 percent, and the voting of party members 40 percent.44 In Zeguo town-
ship, to take another example, the election of the village party secretary
involves three different weighting processes: the party members’ recommen-
dation for candidates constitutes 20 percent, villagers’ elections 20 percent,
and all-party members’ elections 60 percent.45
But while these systems may seek to balance democratic, meritocratic,
and authoritarian principles, in practice they often tip the balance toward
authoritarianism. In most processes, the final stage is a decision made by
the party, reflecting the long tradition of authoritarian appointment pro-
cedures and ensuring CCP control. A system that would balance the three
principles and would function more democratically was proposed by
Ya’An city party officials in 2000 as follows: first, an exam tests the
competent capacities of candidates;46 second, the exam is followed by
the CCP’s standing committee’s selection and examination to ensure
qualifications and their relevance to the office; and third, a popular vote
would be decisive and final. This more democratic kind of proposal,
however, has never been implemented.
7.4.2 Merit Generated by Consultative and Deliberative Processes

A second set of public consultation experiments directly challenges the
elite-focused view of political meritocracy advocated by Bell and is con-
sistent with our view, developed earlier in this chapter, that the merit of
officials often depends on the kinds of knowledge and incentives only
available through democratic processes.47 As we noted in Section 7.2, Bell
views merit as comprised of knowledge, virtues, and social skills possessed
by elites. Not surprisingly, and not unlike political elites everywhere,
Chinese officials tend to have a high regard for their own merit. But like
elites everywhere, they are also finding that individual merit, however
warranted, does not translate into merit-based moral or political legiti-
macy. In ways comparable to the developed democracies, Chinese govern-
ments are likewise under popular pressure to engage with and listen to
citizens. Although citizens’ trust in the CCP remains relatively high, trust
in elite competence has been eroding, and there are increasing demands
for citizens’ voices to be heard.48 Especially today, political merit can only
be built out of judgments that include the values, perspectives, knowledge,
and assessment of citizens.
We find this democratic conception of meritocracy in a wide number
of Chinese local experiments that combine expert discussion and citizen
deliberation on specific questions of public policy. Chinese local leaders
continue to experiment with processes that include consultative and
(often) deliberative elements. In doing so, they are usually seeking
political legitimacy, but, because they often include citizen deliberation,
they are also inventing new forms of democratic meritocracy. Leaders
have used public consultations, often with deliberative qualities, across
the country since the late 1990s and in increasing numbers since the
early 2000s.49
Are these public consultative and deliberative processes credible for
citizens and at the same time likely to result in good government perfor-
mance? Not surprisingly, the key difficulties of these experiments are most
likely to occur when the issues under consideration involve conflicting
perspectives and interests – that is, processes that are truly political. Once
citizens are asked about their opinions and engaged in deliberative pro-
cesses, decisions cannot simply be imposed, no matter how individually
meritorious the leaders and despite the formal authoritarian powers of
party leaders. If citizens are to view decisions as legitimate, decision
procedures must themselves carry democratic credentials, even if they
occur within a formally authoritarian setting.
To identify these latently democratic logics, we need to look inside
decision-making processes themselves. Under circumstances of conflict,
there are at least five options for decision-making. First, a group might
continue their discussion until they reach a consensus. Local officials in
Shanghai have often adopted consensus rules strategically: if some citizens
can persuade others to adopt certain public policies, officials will avoid
being blamed by the people for controversial decisions.50 Nevertheless,
deliberating until reaching a consensus is often impossible, either because
interests conflict too deeply and the process does not yield plus-sum
agreements or because there is not enough time. A consensus rule can
also damage deliberation, since participants will feel peer pressure to

relinquish their opinions and may simply fall silent rather than expressing
their views.51
A second option for some kinds of conflicts is to recognize that con-
flicting interests are intractable and work instead toward a bargain.
A bargain can be plus-sum but supported by different reasons and with
different interests.52
The third option is simply to vote. Voting, of course, can and should
coexist with other devices, including deliberating and bargaining. If delib-
eration cannot produce unanimous agreement and division persists, then
participants should vote.53 In China, sequencing of this kind often comes
about inadvertently: local officials can be backed into voting by citizens
when they are unable to achieve consensus, which they conduct either
formally or though methods such as asking citizens to fill in questionnaires
about their preferences.54
A fourth option is to make an authoritative decision that responds to
the positions, interests, and arguments expressed in a consultative or
deliberative process. To understand this option, we need to distinguish
between “authoritarian” and “authoritative.” The former has to do with
coercive authority; the latter is about legitimate authority based on some
form of process-based virtue, such as impartiality or fairness. Thus, for
example, an authority (like a judge) will listen to all sides, consider the
evidence, and make a decision that responds to a deliberative process. This
kind of authority is consistent with deliberative sources of merit.55 In
contrast, an authoritarian process not only is inconsistent with these
sources of merit but will tend to undermine them. In some local govern-
ments in China, an authoritative decision-maker is called in when there is
a dispute after public deliberation. Of course, many local leaders would
simply prefer to decide the disputed issue themselves, and they usually
have the formal powers to do so. Naked uses of authoritarian powers,
however, invite criticism and resistance. Officials thus usually seek to
avoid these situations, seen as too costly (including for their own advance-
ment), and so they sometimes opt for a deliberative process instead.56
Fifth, and closely related, is the option of administrative discretion,
which can be justifiable in democratic settings in three kinds of ways. One
arises in situations in which an authority identifies a problem or issue and
then uses administrative authority to constitute a process. Another is that
administrative capacities are almost always necessary for decisions to
result in collective actions. That is, deliberative and democratic inputs
need to be matched with state capacities for public goods to get things
done.57 Finally, collective decisions will often have externalities that need
to be anticipated, and they need to be consistent with higher-level units of
decision-making. Administrative discretion can be justified to take such
externalities into account and to integrate decisions with other units of
decision-making. Nonetheless, administrative discretion is easily abused,
which has led China to develop laws that define the scope and limits of
administrative discretion.58
As our examples suggest, political experiments of the kind that produce
better, more meritorious decisions often involve sequencing familiar
devices such as deliberation and voting in novel ways.59 A well-known
example is the annual budget process in Zeguo, which begins by organiz-
ing a deliberative forum loosely based on the method of Deliberative
Polling.60 Half of the participants are randomly selected from Zeguo,
while the other half are selected among the elected officials. The resulting
body then learns, hears from experts, and deliberates. Participants are
polled before and after these processes. The poll results are presented to
Zeguo’s local People’s Congress for further debate and deliberation, after
which it votes on the resulting proposals.
The Zeguo experiment represents an innovative sequencing of well-known
mechanisms: expert feasibility studies are filtered through public participa-
tion, deliberation, and government consultation, with the final decision being
made by Zeguo’s local People’s Congress, which had the choice of either
adopting, revising, or rejecting the proposals by citizens. In all processes,
while citizens can make suggestions, the party organization takes a leadership
role, and the government makes the final decision. Whatever the government
decides to do, after deciding it will immediately inform the citizens of its
decision and outline its reasoning. While the formal structure remains author-
itarian, local leaders can ignore the results of the deliberative process only at
the cost of undermining their legitimacy and risking resistance.61
In other cases, administrative discretion both precedes and follows
deliberative processes. For example, public discussion in one village in
Guangdong over the allocation of the village budget resulted in divisions
between different groups of citizens. In response, the local government set
up a deliberative forum for them to engage in further deliberation and
then used its authority to facilitate a final decision and implement it.62
And in the Zeguo process held in 2005, although the deliberative process
resulted in ten top choices for budget priorities, there was a requirement
from the city-level administration to build a citywide public road. Local
officials had to support this policy even though it was not on the list of
people’s choices.63
More generally, although the CCP encourages local officials to orga-

nize public consultations and deliberations, they reject a pure deliberative
democracy – that is, processes in which citizens make final decisions about
either policy or the selection of representatives. In part, officials do not
want to relinquish authority. But in part they face problems that exist in
any polity, democracies included: decisions taken on a given issue in one
place, one time, and one level of organization will impact other issues,
places, times, and levels of organization. In complex polities, the bound-
aries of demoi are constantly changing, and decisions need to be coordi-
nated within very complex political and organizational environments. At
the same time, since local decisions affect other areas, encompassing
authorities are needed to weigh complex issues and coordinate with
other local governments and people. China’s size, combined with its
great wave of internal migration, adds even more organizational complex-
ity. For similar reasons, even democratically organized governments seek
to retain enough discretion and authority to consider issues and policies of
which citizens may not even be aware, often through boards and commis-
sions whose appointees are selected for their merit, and which work at
some remove from democratic processes. Because these kinds of institu-
tions can be captured by special interests or otherwise fail their mandates,
the oversight of democratically accountable institutions is important.
Such institutions are missing in China.
What is evolving in parts of the Chinese polity, however, is a mix of
deliberative and consultative processes, voting in locales, voting by CCP
deputies, bargaining among interest groups and with social pressure
groups, traditional leadership authority, and administrative persuasion.
Together, these are forming a complex decision-making regime in which
governmental administrative orders combine with bargaining, consulta-
tion, deliberation, and voting. In many places, these mixes show signs of
being regularized. Even taking the limitations of authoritarian rule into
account, many of these experiments combine elements of democracy with
considerations of merit, often mediated by deliberative processes. Many
of these experiments are quite novel and have potential to travel beyond
China’s borders.
7.5 conclusion: the limits of authoritarian

meritocracy
Even apparently successful mixes of democratic and meritocratic princi-
ples in China remain limited by the authoritarian character of the regime.
China may hold out the promise of new forms of democratic meritocracy,
but for the time being the mixes are better characterized as authoritarian
meritocracy with some democratic characteristics. It is authoritarian in
the sense that what constitutes merit in both leadership selection and
policy is ultimately interpreted and decided by CCP leaders. President Xi
Jinping has stopped most election-driven experiments since assuming
leadership, using his authoritarian powers to enforce his view that elec-
tions are nonmeritocratic.64 Xi’s opinion that democracy undermines
merit is widespread among the CCP leadership. National-level leadership,
in this common CCP view, requires more virtue and competence than
democratic elections are likely to produce, and it is more important to
appoint people capable of doing the job than it is to democratize leader-
ship selection.65 Such justifications for avoiding democracy fit the model
of authoritarian meritocracy.
While the Organization Department of the CCP is seeking to become
a modern meritocracy that operates something like a very extensive
human resources department, its authoritarian elements are often used
not to support merit but rather to reward political loyalty (including
corrupt relationships) and ideological correctness. These tendencies have
been increasing under Xi Jinping’s rule.66 The authoritarian qualities of
the regime penetrate down to the local level, undermining democracy even
where experiments in democratic meritocracy are most advanced. In
short, although democracy and meritocracy can be successfully combined
in principle, and although many Chinese experiments seem to point in this
direction, the authoritarian features of the Chinese regime tend to override
both.
The Chinese regime exhibits at least four kinds of contradictions within
the authoritarian meritocracy model that may point toward longer-term
instabilities and perhaps unviability. First, where meritocratic and demo-
cratic features do exist, they are often hidden in an opaque complexity
generated by the combination of examinations, popular opinion, and the
vote of the party committee members. Such complexity makes it difficult
for people to know how decisions are made – and they may conclude,
often correctly, that the system is neither fair nor meritocratic. The system
is very costly in terms of time, preparation, and process, and it is often
subject to manipulation. The complexity in itself helps to maintain power
relations.67 The three-ticket system, innovative though it may be, dilutes
the influence of direct elections in ways that enable the party leaders to
maintain control even in spite of popular opinion. Local officials, for
example, can appoint someone as deputy head of township because of
a higher score in an examination even though they lost the popular vote,
suggesting a system that is easily manipulated by elites.68 In other cases,
under popular resistance and pressure, local officials have introduced the
direct election of party secretaries to reduce conflict between the appoint-
ment and election systems. But this level of transparency and directness
proved too much for the CCP, which banned direct township-level
elections.69
Second, while the weighting systems we discussed in Section 7.4.2 are
potentially an innovative way to combine democracy and meritocracy, in
practice authoritarianism tends to undermine both. The weighting sys-
tems enable the party to select officials while giving the appearance of
supporting democracy and merit.70
Third, in the selection of officials, exams are often rigorous, and local
experience is a necessary requirement. The democratic evaluation, how-
ever, can be manipulated because the exam results are usually not
transparent.71 Even at the local level, where democratic mechanisms are
more common, the background of authoritarian rule often undermines the
processes. Thus, for example, the results of the “public nomination” can be
overridden by CCP officials if they so choose.72 Likewise, the civic exam-
ination results can be overridden and hidden from the public. In a selection
process in Taizhou city in the later 1990s, for example, the release of the
results of intra-party votes threatened to damage the reputation of the party
secretary as he did not win the highest number of votes; subsequently all
results became “internal documents.”73 However much the CCP might
justify these practices with the ideals of merit and competence, they
would be considered corrupt in any full democracy and in fact often
function to hide corrupt relationships within authoritarian hierarchies.
Fourth, while recent experiments introduce the consideration of pop-
ular opinion as a necessary part of procedures, it is too often selectively
used, is only symbolically deliberative, and often serves to support party
domination.74 Thus, for example, deliberation often involves unimpor-
tant issues while the most important issues are set aside; information is
released selectively; or the participants are selected strategically.
In summary, much of what makes the current Chinese regime so inter-
esting are the experiments in combining meritocracy and democracy with
the authoritarian leadership of the CCP.75 These mixes can be viewed
through two models of meritocracy: authoritarian meritocracy and demo-
cratic meritocracy. We have argued that authoritarian meritocracy,
attractive though it may seem to some Western commentators discour-
aged with the underperformance of liberal democracies, tends to favor
authoritarianism more than it does meritocracy. Democratic meritocracy

is still a work in progress, but it has theory, history, and performance on
its side. Indeed, even though some in the West look with envy at China’s
economic performance, Chinese citizens, though still trusting of the CCP’s
leadership, are less convinced that leaders owe their positions to merit and
often view the lack of democracy as an obstacle to meritocracy. For their
part, Chinese leaders are very aware that their legitimacy depends upon
performance, and this form of legitimacy drives demands for merit-based
leadership. Yet, authoritarianism tends to displace merit, limiting, if not
undermining, the CCP’s leadership performance.
Beyond predicting how the Chinese regime might develop, can those of
us in the developed democracies learn anything from Chinese political
development? We have argued against the notion that other countries
should be emulating the authoritarian meritocracy model – not only
because it presupposes an authoritarian regime (with the many well-
known political pathologies that follow) but also because authoritarian-
ism is a poor pathway to meritocracy, in the democracies as well as in
China. But we should pay closer attention to Chinese experiments in
democratic meritocracy: although they are currently undermined by
authoritarian contexts, they may suggest yet new ways of introducing
meritocratic elements into democratic regimes.
notes
1. Stephan Ortmann and Mark R. Thompson. “China and the ‘Singapore
Model’.” Journal of Democracy 27, no. 1 (2016): 39–48.
2. Daniel Bell, The China Model: Political Meritocracy and the Limits of
Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015).
3. See 163–164.
4. As, in quite different ways, the chapters by Tully (2), Jenco (3),
Tsutsumibayashi (5), Chan and Mang (6), Williams (8), and Ivison (11) all do.
5. M. Manion, “‘Good Types’ in Authoritarian Elections: The Selectoral
Connection in Chinese Local Congresses,” Comparative Political Studies
50, no. 3 (2017): 362–394.
6. Benjamin Elman, A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial
China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).
7. Bell, The China Model, ch. 4.
8. Joseph Chan, “Democracy and Meritocracy: Toward a Confucian
Perspective,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 34, no. 2 (2006): 179–193.
9. Ibid.; Lianjiang Li and K. O’Brien, Rightful Resistance in Rural China
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
11. Mark E. Warren, “What Does Corruption Mean in a Democracy?,”

American Journal of Political Science 48, no. 2 (2004): 327–342.
12. Michael Rabinder James, Deliberative Democracy and the Plural Polity
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004); Arend Lijphart, Patterns of
Democracy: Government Dorms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012).
13. Diana Fu and Greg Distelhorst, “Grassroots Participation and Repression
under Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping,” The China Journal 79 (2018): 100–122.
14. Monica Martinez-Bravo, Gerard Padró I Miquel, Nancy Qian, Yang Yao,
“The Rise and Fall of Local Elections in China: Theory and Empirical
Evidence on the Autocrat’s Trade-off,” NBER Working Paper No. 24032,
www.nber.org/papers/w24032.
15. Kenneth Paul Tan and Benjamin Wong, “The Evolution of Political
Legitimacy in Singapore: Electoral Institutions, Governmental Performance,
Moral Authority, and Meritocracy,” in Joseph Chan, Doh Chull Shin, and
Melissa S. Williams, eds., East Asian Perspectives on Political Legitimacy:
Bridging the Empirical-Normative Divide (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2016), 135–165.
16. Baogang He and Mark E. Warren, “Authoritarian Deliberation: The
Deliberative Turn in Chinese Political Development,” Perspectives on Politics
9, no. 2 (2011): 269–289; Rory Truex, “Consultative Authoritarianism and Its
Limits,” Comparative Political Studies 50, no. 3 (2014): 329–361; Beibei Tang,
“Deliberation and Governance in Chinese Middle-Class Neighborhoods,”
Japanese Journal of Political Science 19, no. 4 (2018): 663–677.
17. Bell, The China Model, 4.
18. Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretative Sociology,
vol. 2, ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1978), 956–1005.
19. Ibid., 1386–1469.
20. Ibid., 1405; italics in original.
21. Mark E. Warren, “Governance-Driven Democratization,” in Steven Griggs,
Aletta Norval, and Hendrik Wagenaar, eds., Practices of Freedom:
Democracy, Conflict and Participation in Decentred Governance (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2014), 38–59.
22. Warren, “What Does Corruption Mean in a Democracy?”
23. Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality
(New York: Basic Books, 1983).
25. Ye Liu, “Meritocracy and the Gaokao: A Survey Study of Higher Education
Selection and Socio-Economic Participation in East China,” British Journal of
Sociology of Education, 34, nos. 5–6 (2013): 868–887; He Xian and
Jeremy Reynolds, “Bootstraps, Buddies, and Bribes: Perceived Meritocracy
in the United States and China,” The Sociological Quarterly 58, no. 4 (2017):
622–647.
26. Edelman, 2018 Edelman Trust Barometer Global Report, www.edelman.com
/sites/g/files/aatuss191/files/2018–10/2018_Edelman_Trust_Barometer_Global_
Report_FEB.pdf, 6.
27. Margaret Boittin, Greg Distelhorst, and Francis Fukuyama, “Reassessing the
Quality of Government in China,” Osgoode Legal Studies Research Paper
Series 197 (2016), https://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/olsrps/197.
28. Xian and Reynolds, “Bootstraps, Buddies, and Bribes,” 632.
29. Kjeld Erik Brødsgaard, Paul Hubbard, Guilong Cai, and Linlin Zhang,
“China’s SOE Executives: Drivers of or Obstacles to Reform?,” The
Copenhagen Journal of Asian Studies 35, no. 1 (2017): 52–75.
30. Victor Shih, Christopher Adolph, and Mingxing Liu, “Getting Ahead in the
Communist Party: Explaining the Advancement of Central Committee
Members in China,” American Political Science Review 106, no. 1 (2012):
166–187.
31. Bruce Dickson, Democratization in China and Taiwan: The Adaptability of
Leninist Parties (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997).
32. E.g., Jean C. Oi, Kim Singer Babiarz, Linxiu Zhang, Renfu Luo, and
Scott Rozelle, “Shifting Fiscal Control to Limit Cadre Power in China’s
Townships and Villages,” The China Quarterly 211 (2012): 649–675;
Martinez-Bravo et al., “The Rise and Fall of Local Elections in China.”
33. Baogang He, Rural Democracy in China (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan,
2007); Oi et al., “Shifting Fiscal Control”; Martinez-Bravo et al., “The Rise
and Fall of Local Elections in China.”
34. He, Interviews A and H; cf. Manion, “‘Good Types’ in Authoritarian
Elections”: the view that the “good types” of candidates are selected by voters
and the “governing types” are selected by party officials.
35. Jinping Xi, The New Notes from Zhejiang (Hangzhou: Zhejiang People’s
Daily Press, 2007).
36. He, Rural Democracy in China.
37. Wang Zhang, Three Tickets System Elects Officials (Beijing: Central Party
School Press, 2007).
38. Ibid.
39. Wen-Hsuan Tsai and Peng-Hsiang Kao, “Public Nomination and Direct
Election in China: An Adaptive Mechanism for Party Recruitment and
Regime Perpetuation,” Asian Survey 52, no. 3 (2012): 484–503.
40. He, Interview F.
41. Tsai and Kao, “Public Nomination and Direct Election in China.”
43. He, Rural Democracy in China, ch. 12.
44. Zhang, Three Tickets System Elects Officials; Jonathan Unger and
Anita Chan, “The Internal Politics of an Urban Chinese Work Community:
A Case Study of Employee Influence on Decision-Making at a State-Owned
Factory,” The China Journal 52 (2004): 1–24.
45. He, Interview H.
46. He, Interview B.
47. Bell, The China Model.
48. Truex, “Consultative Authoritarianism and Its Limits”; Dezhi Tong and
Baogang He, “How Democratic Are Chinese Grassroots Deliberations? An
Empirical Study of 393 Deliberation Experiments in China,” Japanese
Journal of Political Science 19, no. 4 (2018): 630–642.
49. Baogang He and Stig Thøgersen, “Giving the People a Voice? Experiments
with Consultative Authoritarian Institutions in China,” The Journal of
Contemporary China 19, no. 66 (2010): 675–692; He and Warren,
“Authoritarian Deliberation”; Truex, “Consultative Authoritarianism and
Its Limits”; Tang, “Deliberation and Governance in Chinese Middle-Class
Neighborhoods.”
51. Christopher F. Karpowitz and Tali Mendelberg, The Silent Sex: Gender,
Deliberation, and Institutions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
2014).
52. Mark E. Warren and Jane Mansbridge, “Deliberative Negotiation,” in Cathie
Jo Martin and Jane Mansbridge, eds., Political Negotiation: A Handbook
(Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2015), 141–96.
53. Robert E. Goodin, Innovating Democracy: Democratic Theory and Practice
after the Deliberative Turn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), ch. 6;
Jeremy Waldron, “Deliberation, Disagreement, and Voting,” in Harold
Hongju Koh and Ronald C. Slye, eds., Deliberative Democracy and Human
Rights (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 1999), 210–226.
54. He, Interviews A, C, D, and E.
55. Mark E. Warren, “Deliberative Democracy and Authority,” American
Political Science Review 90, no. 1 (1996): 46–60.
57. Warren and Mansbridge, “Deliberative Negotiation.”
58. Yang Yang, “Fundamental Research on the Administrative Discretion
Standard,” Beijing Law Review 3 (2012): 128–132.
59. Jon Elster, ed., Deliberative Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1998), ch. 4; Judith Squires, “Deliberation and Decision Making:
Discontinuity in the Two-Track Model,” in Maurizio Passerin d’Entreves,
ed., Democracy as Public Deliberation: New Perspectives (New Brunswick,
NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2002), 151.
60. James S. Fishkin, Baogang He, Robert C. Luskin, and Alice Siu, “Deliberative
Democracy in an Unlikely Place: Deliberative Polling in China,” British
Journal of Political Science 40, no. 2 (2010): 435–448.
61. He and Warren, “Authoritarian Deliberation”; Pu Niu and Hendrik Wagenaar,
“The Limits of Authoritarian Rule: Policy Making and Deliberation in Urban
Village Regeneration in China,” Japanese Journal of Political Science 19, no. 4
(2018): 678–693.
62. Baogang He, “Deliberative Citizenship and Deliberative Governance: A Case
Study of One Deliberative Experimental in China,” Citizenship Studies 22,
no. 3 (2018): 294–311.
63. Fishkin et al., “Deliberative Democracy in an Unlikely Place.”
64. Oi et al., “Shifting Fiscal Control”; Martinez-Bravo et al., “The Rise and Fall
of Local Elections in China.”
66. Oi et al., “Shifting Fiscal Control”; Fu and Distelhorst, “Grassroots Participation
and Repression under Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping”; Martinez-Bravo et al., “The
Rise and Fall of Local Elections in China.”
67. Daniel Drezner, “The Peril and Power of International Regime Complexity,”
Perspectives on Politics 7, no. 1 (2009): 65–70.
68. He and Thøgersen, “Giving the People a Voice?”
69. He, Rural Democracy in China.
71. He, Interviews F, E, and G.
72. He, Interview E.
73. He, Interview G.
74. He and Warren, “Authoritarian Deliberation”; Truex, “Consultative
Authoritarianism and Its Limits”; Xuan Qin and Baogang He, “Deliberation,
Demobilization, and Limited Empowerment: A Survey Study on Participatory
Pricing in China,” Japanese Journal of Political Science 19, no. 4 (2018):
694–708.
75. Andrew J. Nathan, “Authoritarian Resilience,” Journal of Democracy 14,
no. 1 (2003): 6–17.

Authoritarian and Democratic Pathways To Meritocracy in China

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Authoritarian and Democratic Pathways To Meritocracy in China

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

7

Authoritarian and Democratic Pathways

Baogang He and Mark E. Warren

Chapter 6 of this volume.3 Rather, meritocracy expresses the ideal that

undermining the meritocratic and democratic elements in the institutional

regime-type categories. What we ﬁnd are a number of uniquely Chinese

7.2 meritocracy versus democracy?

Knowledge/ judgment Regime Type

terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108635042.008

spaces where it can be generated, such as universities and research orga-

channels of communication. On the other hand, there are more resources

China departs from a purely authoritarian pattern in some important

7.3 mixed regimes: institutionally differentiated

built on processes that began to differentiate domains of merit centuries

produce functional pressures for governance that is sufﬁciently competent

7.4 mixed models of local democratic

7.4.1 Leader-Selection Systems: The “Three Ticket” and “Public

t ab le 7 . 2 Typology of appointment systems

Methods Top-down, The combination of Bottom-up

village-level leaders, as well as part of a more general strategy to undergird

To address such issues, Chinese ofﬁcials have modiﬁed local elections

other places, as it is regarded by the CCP as being incompatible with

7.4.2 Merit Generated by Consultative and Deliberative Processes

also damage deliberation, since participants will feel peer pressure to

More generally, although the CCP encourages local ofﬁcials to orga-

7.5 conclusion: the limits of authoritarian

authoritarianism more than it does meritocracy. Democratic meritocracy

11. Mark E. Warren, “What Does Corruption Mean in a Democracy?,”

You might also like