New York: Oxford University Press, 2014, c2013. xvi, 210 pp. (Tables, figures.) US$50.00, paper. ISBN 978-0-19-938561-4.
Jie Chen has written an accessible contribution to the theoretical debates on the relationship between development and democracy, with findings that are relevant to issues of late and late-late developers, post-Communist transition, and authoritarian states in general, as well as to the crucial questions of the role of middle class in democratic transitions and in China in particular. Using excellent probability sample survey data and in-depth qualitative interviews, Chen runs bivariate and multivariate regressions to rigorously test a set of hypotheses common among academics, pundits, and policy makers about the inevitability of democracy in middle-level income countries. His findings should make scholars and politicians alike sit up and take notice.
While not completely comprehensive in its treatment of debates around democracy, leaving out recent discussions of the meaning of the zigzag in democratic development in Latin America and elsewhere and only briefly mentioning the debates about premature or illiberal democracies (overlooking Guillermo O’Donnell’s contributions entirely), the book still provides excellent summaries of debates such as the role of economic development and the middle class in creating democracy (3–10), definitions of “middle class” by subjective or objective criteria, and by quantitative vs. qualitative measures (30–33), and models of China’s new middle-class
growth using market-transition vs. state-centric models (43–44). Chen conducted well-designed random surveys and interviews in Beijing, Chengdu, and Xi’an to test a wide range of hypotheses related to Chinese classes’ political views. Chen’s definitions and operationalization of relevant concepts such as “support for democracy” (67–75) and support for the state (both diffuse and specific) (80–86) are comprehensively justified. He breaks with many who identify China’s middle class based on income, and convincingly explains his choice of occupation for identifying the middle class (managerial personnel, professionals, and office workers, 35, 64).
Chen’s excellent bivariate and multivariate analyses result in wonderfully well-supported findings, which this short review cannot fully explore. Most dramatically, the Chinese middle class as a whole is shown to be less supportive of democratic principles and institutions than the lower class (77, 112). Chen’s cross-tabulations between the indices of democratic support and political support show that those within the middle class who both support the current CCP regime and who gave high scores for their policy performance are much less supportive of democracy and democratization (89). This negative view of democracy and political change is even stronger among the middle class who work in the party/state or in state-owned enterprises.
Thus Chen finds that the attitudes of the new middle class toward democracy in China today are “contingent”—dependent on the class members’ moral and material connection with the party/state. Those directly in the state bureaucracy or state-owned enterprises (60 percent of the sample) are even less supportive of democracy than the middle class as a whole, confirming what has been found across the developing world (89 and chapters 4 and 6). Those in the middle class who work within the state sector only have a “high” support for democracy in 11 percent of the sample, while those outside the state sector have a high support for democracy 49 percent of the time (101). Interestingly, the middle class is more inclined to vote in elections the more they dislike democracy (133). Among all respondents, by contrast, supporters of democracy were dramatically less likely to vote than those who supported the current party/state system. Students of democratic developments in China would be well served to keep this in mind when crunching numbers and positing implications of electoral participation in China. Chen also shows that the middle class has much greater support for the political regime and its fundamental values, norms, and institutions (84), making it highly unlikely that this class will be a source of democratic pressure. Chen points out that contrary views of the Chinese middle class have not used probability surveys as he did, thus his findings are more robust (80).
Chen argues that all the so-called democratic institutions of current-day China are not only pseudo-democratic, but have been carefully designed by the CCP to be politically, structurally, and ideologically constrained to serve the ultimate political goal of state legitimacy, not democratization (chapter 5). “Not only has the CCP severely restricted the scope and format of electoral activities and deliberations, but it has also made relentless efforts to control the substance of the activities and deliberations to make sure that no political view contrary to the CCP’s ‘four cardinal principles’ sneaks into the local elections” (126). Unfortunately, the citations Chen’s literature reviews on China are often drawn from the 1990s and do not include recent developments and innovations. Relatedly, the “Chinese party/state” is portrayed quite monolithically, ignoring long-standing debates about the fragmentation of its authoritarianism.
The entirely urban focus of the book should have been repeated in text and in tables to make sure the findings were appropriately qualified. Chen does not cite any current proponents of modernization theory, but still makes shooting down its prediction of development leading to democracy one of his key points, missing an opportunity to engage policy and popular debate, where the theory is alive and well.
In the conclusion, Chen includes a broad pan-Asian comparative analysis of the role of the middle class. It appears clear that so long as the majority of China’s middle class remains tied to the party/state, both institutionally and ideationally (160), formal channels of political participation will continue to be used in ways that support the party/state. Written in a clear, engaging style, with effortlessly readable literature reviews of academic debates, this volume should be considered a must-read for those directly researching issues of development and democracy as well as those teaching in relevant undergraduate or graduate programs. This reviewer has decided to use parts of the book both in a China-specific upper-level undergraduate Chinese politics class and in a development-oriented class this year.
Michelle S. Mood
Kenyon College, Gambier, USA
pp. 631-633