Revolutionizing the Party-state: The 1975 Chinese State Constitution

This dissertation argues that state constitutions reflect and temporarily freeze ongoing and haphazard interactions unfolding amongst actors and institutions. To investigate this claim, I examine China’s 1975 State Constitution. A remnant of the turbulent Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR), the 1975 State Constitution has evaded all but a few scholars. Adopting elements from institutionalism, I show that the 1967 January Revolution as a “critical juncture” produced four separate results: (1) the “Revolutionary Committees” as a new form of revolutionary institution; (2) the organizational dominance of the military; (3) the importance of “revolution” as ideology and as a way to structure institutions; and (4) the Party as a new type of organization. Themselves emerging from seemingly random choices, these four sequences interacted and changed each other, leading to unintended consequences and eventually producing the 1975 State Constitution as a by-product. My contribution is then three-fold: first, I advance a new reading of the GPCR that rejects interpretations based on the leadership having a master plan. Instead, I show that decision-makers were heavily constrained and more reactive than active. My argument then shows the dominance of structural over individual factors. Second, institutional actors are not rational. Actors are often unable to anticipate the consequences of their choices. Likewise, against the intentions of their creators, institutions often produce outcomes that reinforce or worsen problems instead of resolving them. Here, short-term fixes undermine long-term aims. Third, I provide a new understanding of how state constitutions work. Rejecting functionalist interpretations, I show how they are the result of unforeseen consequences resulting from decisions made in highly contingent situations. Given the recent constitutional amendments in China under Xi Jinping, this dissertation then enables us to rethink and reconsider current and ongoing trends.