This research focuses on an under-researched political phenomenon in contemporary China: non-electoral public participation. The thesis specifically investigates the following three mechanisms: consultative meetings, public hearings and the use of surveys and questionnaires. Through individual case studies, I processtrace their emergence and development in Zhejiang Province. The study is informed by interviews with local-level policy-makers, state officials, academics and citizens' representatives. On an empirical level, the study provides information on the normative, legislative and institutional background of these mechanisms, as well as a critical assessment of their achievements and failures. On a theoretical level, I firstly test the hypothesis that non-electoral public participation is a function of the CCP's state building strategy: creating a state apparatus capable of producing effective solutions to governing challenges requires public pm1icipation in the governing process. The study therefore introduces the distinction between access to and exercise of power to capture such context. The pm1icipatory mechanisms addressed in the study engage citizens in the exercise of power within the party-state's strategy to improve its governing capacity and performance. At the same time, the extent to which participation through non-electoral mechanisms enables the public to exert influence on politics is limited by being firmly constrained to the exercise dimension of politics, and placed within such a normative, institutional and regulative framework that gives the party-state's agents leeway to decisively influence the participatory outcomes.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:659219 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Pavlicevic, Dragan |
| Publisher | University of Nottingham |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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