Political participation, clientelism, and state-society relations in contemporary China

This dissertation analyzes how authoritarian regimes without competitive elections sustain their rule by allowing for certain political structures of participation and clientelism. The case of the post-totalitarian and market reform Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime shows how a non-electoral authoritarian regime can sustain its rule without using authoritarian electoral strategies.;My central argument is as follows. Its survival without elections depends on (1) the "compartmentalizing" elite and non-elite political participation, which undermines interaction and cooperation between elite and non-elite citizens for mass opposition; and (2) the forming and consolidating "local commercial clientelist coalition (LCCC)" between local governments and economic elites, which excludes and tends to exploit non-elites for local economic growth and private gains. Such political structure has helped the regime to pursue developmentalist economic policies because of the LCCC's efficient but brutal exploitation of non-elite labor, land, and other valuable resources without risking potential multi-class mass-opposition movements, which some large-scale semi-competitive elections might cause. The regime, however, encounters such policies' serious negative externality---numerous ferocious but unorganized non-elite resistance.;To test such hypothesis, the first empirical part of this dissertation analyze how a major non-elite compartment of political participation--- Xinfang (petition)---works not only for non-elites but also for the CCP regime. The second empirical part looks at how the LCCC has formed and consolidated as well as how non-elites respond to the formidable LCCC's behaviors.;This theoretical and empirical understanding is critical not only because China is a rising superpower with more than 1.3 billion population, but also because it offers a rare contrast with the study of "electoral authoritarianism," which is a more common form of authoritarianism in the world today.