A Study Of Political Participation In Contemporary China

In modern democratic societies,political participation not only becomes a basic democracy actualizing mechanism with an important instrumental value,but also relates to the individual value and dignity of citizenry,becoming an important end itself.Therefore,the status of political participation in our country is an important window for observing the development of democratic politics and citizen empowerment in our country.In field of political participation in China,there are relatively much normative research on the concept and meaning of political participation as well as its relations to other political values,while relatively little positive research based on objective evidences obtained through observation,experiment or survey,and even less empirical research based on multiple waves of large-scale sample survey data crossing a relatively long time period.This dissertation,by virtue of three waves of nation-wide sample survey data,systematically describes the picture of political participation in contemporary China and deeply analyzes its major influential factors and development trend.Eyeing on the current situation,this dissertation utilizes three waves of nation-wide survey data to map the profile of political participation in contemporary China.In general,relatively much people are involved in politics but the depth of participation is far from enough,and structural differences exist among different types of participation.Beyond participation in the electoral system,contact and resistance are relatively much seen,while communication is relatively rare.The relatively high level of contact implies that the political participation of Chinese citizens is characterized by power centrism and dependency,and it is not rare that people try to transform the universal rules of rights and power into special treatment based on personal ties.The rise of resistance participation means risks of ruling and governance to the government,but it also means opportunities for accelerating institutional innovations under external stresses,that is,to enhance the capacity of the political system to accommodate diverse political participation behaviors and improve the level of political democracy through institutional development.In this dissertation,an explanatory framework named "political actors in social changes"is developed to probe into the main factors influencing the political participation of Chinese citizens.Seen from the individual characteristics of political actors,the results of data analysis show that the socioeconomic status,political psychology and political concepts of individuals have a great impact on their participatory behavior.The political participation of Chinese citizens is not distributed in proportion to their education level and income.In some specific participation behaviors such as contact and resistance,low-SES individuals even behave more actively than the high-SES ones.Political psychological factors like efficacy and trust in government also have a mixed effect on political participation.Different combinations of internal and external efficacy affect not only the activity of people’s participation,but also their preferences for participatory options.The negative correlation between trust in local government and resistance points to some problems in the current labor division between the central and local governments.A positive correlation between support for democracy and non-electoral participation does not appear as expected,while orientation to authoritarianism is positively correlated to resistance.This implies that although most people have accepted the concept of democracy,there is a great distance from the concept of democracy to real participatory behavior based on the idea of democracy.Seen from the social environment in which the subjects of political participations are located,the analysis of this dissertation shows that the rapid and deep social change of contemporary China has a profound impact on the participatory behavior of Chinese people.The achievements and problems of economic reform and development of over thirty years have important effects on the political participation of Chinese citizens.The continuous economic growth and the rise of people’s living standard have endowed people with more resources required for participating in politics,improving their ability to take political actions;however,the enlargement of income disparity has induced grievance and resentment among the public,affecting people’s choice of participatory behavior.The reforms in politics and administration,including implementation of village elections and emphasis on government efficiency,accountability,response and service in the reform of public administration,have promoted the openness of political and administrative processes and enlarged the opportunities for political participation.However,it is the people’s actual appraisal of grassroots election and public services that finally determines their real effect on political participation.The evolution of political culture also changes people’s participatory behavior.The hierarchical orientation toward authority and the idea of interpersonal harmony,being the kernel factors of Chinese traditional culture,could not be changed in a short time.Generally,the former can promote various types of Chinese citizens’ political participation,while the latter prohibits them to some degree.Collectivism and statism are positively correlated to electoral participation.The contemporary collectivism is the product of the Party rebuilding the ideological resource of traditional collectivism,while statism is a cultural element implanted from outside by the Party for revolution and construction.These two ideas are rooted in Chinese people’s mind to a relatively limited depth,and recently are loosened to some degree by the development of market economy and the tide of western thoughts like individualism and liberalism.This echoes to the decline of voter turnout in recent years.The development trend of political participation of Chinese citizens in 2002-2015 is as follows:communication has grown a little,resistance is still at a high level after growth of ten years;while voting,campaigning and contact have witnessed decline to different degrees in the last three or five years.The changes show that the overall transformation of political participation has occurred in China.People have become somewhat alienated from voting in local elections,while preferred communication with or even protest against government departments and the officers as their favorite channels for political participation.The results of analysis show that,the life cycle effect is helpful for explaining the behavioral differences among different age groups;however,the cohort effect and the institutional learning effect have a greater impact on the overall transformation of political participation of Chinese citizens.In the latest years,the government has tried a lot to control the social order and as an unintended result,the public has lost a part of their enthusiasm in politics.The tension between the government efforts and the political endeavor of the public suggests that,the government is likely to face a dilemma when trying to balance political participation and political order:if the government indulge the political passion of the public,the social stability might be threatened by "explosion of participation";if too much are done to control the social order,the political atmosphere might be cooled down and the people alienated from political life,contrary to the forward paces of democracy.As a solution to this dilemma,the capacity of the regime accommodating public participation should be enlarged to actualize multiple value goals such as political stability,advancement of democracy,and social harmony at the same time when satisfying the ever-increasing public demand for participation.The cohort effect implies that the new generations are calling for political empowerment based on partial realization of economic and cultural empowerment,and that the political democracy and citizen participation of our country will necessarily keep on marching forward.Embedded in the all-around social change of China,undoubtedly the political behavior of Chinese citizens has an important meaning to the development of Chinese democracy,and it is in a process of continuous change.Hence,the political participation of Chinese citizenry is worthy of unceasing attention from the academia.Based on the experiences and limits of this study,the future research on political participation of Chinese citizens should go on marching forward along with the benign interaction between normative and positive research,the development of scientific,systematic and accurate measures of political participation,the appropriate integration of diverse research approaches and methods,and the expansion of relevant research fields.