Democratic Localism: The Case of Grassroots Self-Governance in Urban China

One important way to understand political change in China is to examine how citizens participate in and interact with China’s grassroots system of governance. Urban grassroots self-governance is organized around the residents committees (RCs) of various urban neighborhoods. While earlier research tends to characterize the RC as an institution for government control and penetration of society, the active and largely voluntary participation found in this study challenges this state-dominant view. Based on survey data collected in six provinces in China, we discovered a wide range of participatory activities by residents in local self-governance processes. Institutions and activities of such “democratic localism” give rise to thick networks and interactions among fellow residents and between them and higher levels of governance. Our “Democratic Localism” framework urges researchers to resist focusing solely on the changes at the highest system-level (i.e., the eventual democratization of the Chinese state), but instead to pay more attention to politics and governance as played out in the local affairs of community residents. We find that satisfactory democratic governance relies heavily on inclusiveness and competition in the various institutional spheres, and participation in local politics casts heavy influence on citizens’ perception of national-level politics.