This book theorizes Chinese politics, specifically about China’s “deliberative democracy (xieshang minzhu 协商民主)”. Creating a China-West comparative framework, the author interrogates China's government's claims to give representation to citizens, allowing readers to see how all of these concepts interact within Chinese ideology, democratic discourse, and governance, and their relationship with Chinese authoritarianism. Above all, this book represents a sustained hybridization of political theory, one which is neither a simple democratic-authoritarian dichotomy, nor a reinterpretation of the official propaganda. This study will interest scholars of Chinese politics and statecraft, shedding light on an emergent discourse of the state – Chinese xieshang minzhu. More importantly, this book goes beyond a simple rhetorical and linguistic use of ‘deliberative democracy’ in the Western sense, and rather emphasizes the very consultative nature of Chinese politics, which facilitates and reconsolidates Chinese authoritarianism.

Civil Society under Authoritarianism takes a fresh look at civil society in China, analyzing the nuanced and dynamic relationship between civil society and government officials.

Despite the dominant narrative of the repression of civil society in China, Civil Society under Authoritarianism: The China Model argues that interactions between local officials and civil society facilitate a learning process, whereby each actor learns about the intentions and work processes of the other. Over the past two decades, often facilitated by foreign donors and problems within the general social framework, these interactions generated a process in which officials learned the benefits and disadvantages of civil society. Civil society supports local officials' efforts to provide social services and improve public policies, yet it also engages in protest and other activities that challenge social stability and development. This duality motivates local officials in China to construct a 'social management' system - known as consultative authoritarianism - to encourage the beneficial aspects and discourage the dangerous ones.

"Rampant corruption and declining regime legitimacy force the Communist Party to reform the political and legal system of the PRC. There are different opinions on how far these reforms have affected Chinese authoritarianism so far. While some observers have identified a higher degree of regime legitimacy achieved by gradual political liberalization in recent years, others have stated a reconsolidation of non-democratic one-party rule providing only temporary stability for the political system at best. The PRC leadership, for its part, has repeatedly claimed to work towards 'socialist democracy' by separating the Party from the government and subjecting the system to the rule of law. The institutional foundations of 'socialist democracy' may have been spelled out by Beijing scholar Pan Wei by his idea of 'consultative rule of law' modelled along the Hong Kong and Singaporean examples. This paper reconstructs Pan Wei's basic argument for such a system and discusses both its conceptual consistency and political practicability. It is suggested in this article that reforming Chinese authoritarianism by implementing legal reforms, a modern civil service structure and more mechanisms of political consultation might work for some time. It is argued, however, that 'consultative rule of law' cannot sustain one-party rule in the long run."--Summary on item.

How China's political model could prove to be a viable alternative to Western democracy Westerners tend to divide the political world into "good" democracies and “bad” authoritarian regimes. But the Chinese political model does not fit neatly in either category. Over the past three decades, China has evolved a political system that can best be described as “political meritocracy.” The China Model seeks to understand the ideals and the reality of this unique political system. How do the ideals of political meritocracy set the standard for evaluating political progress (and regress) in China? How can China avoid the disadvantages of political meritocracy? And how can political meritocracy best be combined with democracy? Daniel Bell answers these questions and more. Opening with a critique of “one person, one vote” as a way of choosing top leaders, Bell argues that Chinese-style political meritocracy can help to remedy the key flaws of electoral democracy. He discusses the advantages and pitfalls of political meritocracy, distinguishes between different ways of combining meritocracy and democracy, and argues that China has evolved a model of democratic meritocracy that is morally desirable and politically stable. Bell summarizes and evaluates the “China model”—meritocracy at the top, experimentation in the middle, and democracy at the bottom—and its implications for the rest of the world. A timely and original book that will stir up interest and debate, The China Model looks at a political system that not only has had a long history in China, but could prove to be the most important political development of the twenty-first century.

"With an empirical focus on regimes in Singapore, the Philippines, and Malaysia, the author examines the social forces that underpin the emergence of institutional experiments in democratic participation and representation"--