Bruce Gilley

The Determinants of State Legitimacy: Results for 72 Countries

This article examines a range of potential causal variables of state legitimacy using a globally representative set of 72 countries accounting for 83 percent of the world’s population. Major theories of legitimacy determinants are advanced and tested using survey and expert data. Three variables (which measure good governance, democratic rights, and welfare gains) are then chosen from among all strongly correlated variables as being the most plausible basis for a causal theory. The theory is then further tested using 31 pairs of countries with similar income levels and in similar regions, which shows a significant positive correlation between performance and legitimacy. The article concludes with suggestions for further research.

Authoritarian environmentalism and China's response to climate change

Authoritarian environmentalism is a non-participatory approach to public policy-making and implementation in the face of severe environmental challenges. Using the case of Chinas climate change policy, the meaning, causes, and consequences of authoritarian environmentalism are explored. A key finding is that authoritarian environmentalism is more effective in producing policy outputs than outcomes. Theoretical and policy implications follow.

Legitimacy and Institutional Change The Case of China

What explains the nature of institutional change in post-1989 China? Dominant theories of institutional change focus on economic-rationalist, sociopolitical, or historical causes. Yet they have trouble explaining the pattern of institutional change in China. An alternative legitimacy-based perspective is proposed here that provides a more parsimonious and general theory of institutional change for China and potentially for other cases as well.

Against the concept of ethnic conflict

Despite a boom in studies of ethnic conflict, the empirical and conceptual justification for this field remains weak. Not only are claims of surging ethnic conflict unsubstantiated, but the concept itself is problematic. The concept tends to homogenise quite distinct political phenomena. Making valid causal inferences about ‘ethnic conflict’ is nearly impossible as a result, a shortcoming reflected in the un‐robust nature of the literature on the subject. For both practical and normative reasons there is a good argument for abandoning the field of ethnic conflict studies.

IS democracy poSSIble

Anti-democratic thought is enjoying a resurgence with new claims of citizen incompetence, ignorance, and irrationality. While these claims have a long pedigree, they have become more widely held in a democratic age. They point to important insights concerning the limits of popular rule, although they are often based on misunderstandings or simple errors. Those that are valid are in any case already reflected in the institutions of democratic countries, especially those of the United States, where the claims are mostly made. The overstatement of these claims reminds us that democracy is not just possible, but also necessary. While the belief in democracy has spread around the world, it has begun to crumble in some of the West’s finest academic institutions.

The Debate on Party Legitimacy in China: A Mixed Quantitative/Qualitative Analysis

We report results here from a mixed quantitative–qualitative analysis of 168 articles published in China on the question of regime and party legitimacy. We find that ideology remains a leading strategy of future legitimation for the CCP, alongside better known strategies of institution-building and social justice. We also find that liberalism, while less often proposed, remains a potent critique of regime legitimacy. We use these results to make predictions about the evolutionary path of institutional change of Chinas political system, linking up Chinese elite debate with the wider scholarly debate of authoritarian durability.

Legitimacy Crisis: Again?

Since the dawn of time, it seems, social critics have been warning of a “crisis of legitimacy” in the political world. Manuel Castells repeats this ageless battle-cry in his 2004 Ithiel de Sola Pool lecture ( PS , January 2005, 9–16), warning darkly of an “increasing alienation of citizens” that “threatens to undo the democratic system” (9). As proof, he offers an array of point-in-time survey results from Western countries in recent years, as well as anecdotal evidence of “the expression of political protest” in places like California and France (9). Yet, none of this shows anything except the fact that states are imperfect creations for the expression of political community and, as Isaiah Berlin might have added, the timeless costs of social life.

Democratic enclaves in authoritarian regimes

This article introduces a new concept to the literature on authoritarian regimes – the ‘democratic enclave’ – and contrasts it to the well-known concept of the ‘authoritarian enclave’. The meaning and description of democratic enclaves is given. A causal theory of democratic enclaves is outlined and their consequences considered. Theoretical and policy implications follow.

The Limits of Authoritarian Resilience

The success of the recent leadership transition in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might be interpreted as evidence that China’s authoritarian regime is historically unique. More than a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the communist orders of Eastern Europe, the CCP not only remains in power but has installed a younger, bettereducated, even more confident set of successors at its head. And the CCP’s Sixteenth Party Congress in November 2002 marked the first smooth leadership transition in a communist regime not to have involved the death or purging of the outgoing leader. Authoritarian regimes have been traditionally understood by political theorists as being terminally weak at their core, due to the absence of any of the checks on power that the rule of law, the separation of powers, or popular contestability would afford. The view is that the inherent weakness of these regimes will inevitably become more pronounced as the relative balance of resources shifts over time away from the state and toward autonomous social forces, often as a result of such forms of development as economic growth or international opening. At these stages of development, it is generally believed, authoritarian regimes find themselves suffering from what might be called “the logic of concentrated power”—that is, the tendency for power to concentrate in the hands of a few individuals or personalistic factions and to be fatally misused by them, with results that typically include misgovernment, a deterioration of legitimacy, corruption, and weak norms of conduct among governing elites. 1 But China—whose people represent roughly half of that part of the Bruce Gilley is a doctoral student in politics at Princeton University. He is a former contributing editor at the Far Eastern Economic Review, author of Tiger on the Brink: Jiang Zemin and China’s New Elite (1998), and co-author (with Andrew Nathan) of China’s New Rulers: The Secret Files (2002).

Asia's Giants: Comparing China and India

Preface E.Friedman Introduction R.MacFarquhar Two Paths to Modernity B.Gilley ECONOMIC REFORMS Differential Development: Beyond Regime Dichotomies J.Mukherji Chasing China: Can India Bridge the Gap? S.Awamy Indias Reform Strengths J.Manor & G.Segal SUB-NATIONAL FACTORS The Persistence of Informal Finance K.Tsai The Political Basis of Decentralization A.Sinha Indigenous vs. Foreign Business Models H.Yasheng & T.Khanna NEW PERSPECTIVES Why Democracy Matters E.Friedman China Rethinks India H.Jinxin Development and Choice A.Saich Conclusion B.Gilley