Authoritarian Deliberation: The Deliberative Turn in Chinese Political Development

Authoritarian rule in China is now permeated by a wide variety of deliberative practices. These practices combine authoritarian concentrations of powerwith deliberative influence, producing the apparent anomaly of authoritarian deliberation. Although delib-eration is usually associated with democracy, they are distinct phenomena. Democracy involves the inclusion of individuals in mat-ters that affect them through distributions of empowerments such as votes and rights. Deliberation is a mode of communication involvingpersuasion-based influence.Combinations of non-inclusive power anddeliberative influence—authoritariandeliberation— are readily identifiable in China, probably reflecting failures of command authoritarianism under the conditions of complexity and pluralism produced by market-oriented development. The concept of authoritarian deliberation frames two possible trajectories of political development in China: the increasing use of deliberative practices stabilizes and strengthens authoritarian rule, or delib-erative practices serve as a leading edge of democratization. O ver the last two decades, authoritarian regimes inAsia have increasingly experimented with con-trolled forms of political participation and delib-eration, producing a variety of “hybrid ” regimes. These regimes mix authoritarian rule with political devices includ-ing elections, consultative forums, political parties, and legislatures that we would normally associate with democ-racy.1 China is a particularly important case; though i