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Authoritarian Learning in China's Civil Society Regulations: Towards a Multi-Level Framework
[journal article]
Abstract How do authoritarian governments learn? What kind of events and experiences can lead them to adopt more or less restrictive policies towards social actors? And, how are such lessons from others’ experiences integrated into new policies? These questions have been addressed and answered quite differen... view more
How do authoritarian governments learn? What kind of events and experiences can lead them to adopt more or less restrictive policies towards social actors? And, how are such lessons from others’ experiences integrated into new policies? These questions have been addressed and answered quite differently from various disciplinary perspectives, focusing either on international dynamics such as “authoritarian diffusion” or on domestic policy learning. This article seeks to integrate different perspectives on authoritarian learning by proposing a typological framework of positive and negative learning from three distinct sources: authoritarian peers, democratic countries, and subnational policy experiments. I argue that such a comprehensive framework better accounts for both the relative importance and for the interaction of different kinds of learning in national-level policy processes. To illustrate the framework’s added analytical value, I use an exemplary case study of recent legislative changes to China’s civil society policy, which have been alternatively interpreted as part of an authoritarian “wave” or as another step in incremental domestic learning processes.... view less
Keywords
China; authoritarian system; non-governmental organization; civil society; government supervision; control; regulation; decision making; policy implementation; Far East
Classification
Political Process, Elections, Political Sociology, Political Culture
Free Keywords
authoritarian diffusion; charity; policy learning
Document language
English
Publication Year
2018
Page/Pages
p. 147-186
Journal
Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, 47 (2018) 3
Issue topic
State and Society under Xi Jinping
ISSN
1868-4874
Status
Published Version; peer reviewed