Improving Municipal Governance, Increasing Local Democracy: Reflections on Recent Initiatives in China

摘要

The last few years in China have witnessed a wide variety of new initiatives and experiments aimed at improving the ability of the Chinese Communist Party and its government to govern effectively. A striking aspect of many of the new initiatives is that they either embody or promise to advance democratic principles and thus have the potential to make governance more democratic. The aim of this paper is to offer some initial reflections on this development. First, the paper reviews the kinds of initiatives that have been undertaken, identifying how they involve the advance of democratic principles in governance. Next, a discussion of the concepts of governance and democracy provides the theoretical perspective needed to make sense of the phenomenon of democratizing local governance within a non-democratic political regime. This is followed by a review of the global trend towards democratizing local governance that suggests that democratizing governance leads to better governance. Lastly, the question as to the feasibility of using democratic mechanisms in governance in China is briefly addressed in a very preliminary fashion. The main observation is that improving and democratizing local governance may require adjustments to the Communist Party's cadre management system. Overall, the paper argues that initiatives aimed at improving governance through the use of democratic mechanisms have great promise in China, but that it will take a significant commitment on the part of Party and government leaders to make these initiatives work.