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Kaiser Y Kuo's avatar

Who is talking about having them adopt China's system? How do you conclude that this is something I would endorse? In any case, I would be happy to administer your test on people if the questions weren't leading — that is, they would need to ask, "Is there more than one way for a government to enjoy political legitimacy?" or something to that effect.

More interestingly, your response seems to suggest to me that you're also someone who believes that the ballot box is the only possible basis of legitimacy, yeah? So all states outside of a few Greek city-states until the late 18th century were illegitimate, and in that and the following two centuries, a huge portion were also illegitimate?

Finally, can we at least agree that you're not going to do this "....but Taiwan???" comment on every post of mine you take issue with? This is at least the third time you've done it and I'm sensing serious deja vu, having to talk about scale and historical conditions again and again.

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gedawei's avatar

I promise to not bring up Taiwan if you would at least think of it once in a while while discussing the very complicated relationship between China and the US - since one can reasonably argue that the status of Taiwan has always been, and remains, a critical component of that relationship!

But yes, I brought up ballot boxes as being essential for “legitimacy” because it’s a notion shared by most of the world, and in virtually every modern state outside of China. Of course it’s not just free and fair elections - it’s also an independent press, independent judiciary and constitutional rights for citizens that the government cannot violate. These are not American values, not even western values - anymore. That’s why I brought up Japan, SK and Taiwan. These principles for what constitutes legitimate governance are in fact widely accepted in the Sinosphere (including Singapore) outside of the Mainland. These principles would surely take root in China again, as they did briefly in the late 80’s, if only the government would allow them to be discussed.

Seriously, can anyone in China even debate openly (in print, for the record) the suitability of “ballot boxes” for Chinese governance, as you and I might? The answer is no. It’s a notion that nobody can openly argue for - and you’re okay with that?

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Kaiser Y Kuo's avatar

I'm not "okay with that" in an abstract sense. My personal preference would be for not only the ability to discuss that openly in China, but for a more directly participatory procedural form to take hold in China. But I weigh the exigencies, understand that there's a strong case against leaping toward that with all the messiness that might entail, recognize what electoral systems must now look like from the point of view of many Chinese who conclude that they're better off without them, and ultimately accept that different states will prioritize things differently. I simply don't believe that arguments suggesting that just because small polities, with their very specific circumstances, can have successful electoral political systems that QED the mainland can do exactly the same. Meanwhile, regarding China's government as illegitimate because it isn't democratic sets back the project of eventual democratization, and for what?

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Stevan Harrell's avatar

I have a feeling both of you may be missing part of the point about Taiwan. Of course its economic development and the maintenance of its rulership (both before and after the transition from Leninism to electoral democracy) were dependent on US patronage. Of course it's small. Everyone knows that. But today, its government can claim *both* procedural and performance legitimacy. I think most people, worldwide, would argue that, performance legitimacy held constant, procedural legitimacy on top of it is better than the lack thereof. And I'm not sure the scale argument holds water, though if it does, it means large countries would ideally be split up, something a half-century Cascadian like me would consider a consummation devoutly to be wished. People who accepted some of the rougher parts of China's governance as inevitable even if it they were not desirable, often used to say things like 中国人口太多,没办法 and similar rather thought-free mantras.

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Knight Fu's avatar

I don't think the essay argued against procedural legitimacy or devalued it; neither did Kaiser in the comments. Personally, I am not sure whether procedural legitimacy — specifically democratic institutions — holding performance, is "better," but even if I could make the case succinctly, which I cannot, it is just a hunch, and not worth the keystrokes.

The question raised here is whether democratic institutions should be universal and whether these institutions form the basis of state legitimacy. I cannot recall this essay arguing that it isn't plausible or even likely for China to be counterfactually both economically advanced (and dare I say socially progressive) AND democratic; I get the impression that Kaiser in his "Priority Pluralism" essay makes room for the opposite. Some critical of this essay are saying that China should exhibit democratic institutions in order to be legitimate, and they are justifying this claim by naming other states that have achieved performance and procedural legitimacy. Notably, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. (Absent, parenthetically, are Vietnam or Singapore; maybe we question the legitimacy of these states, too.)

There is substance to Kaiser's skepticism that state legitimacy is founded on democratic institutions: (to provide a simple Lockian interpretation) property rights, legal due process, freedom of thought in expression and dissemination, and the election of government by citizenry. I cannot and don't want to speak for Kaiser, so here is my own skepticism, not only in context of China, but more broadly: 1) state legitimacy seems to mean something other than "governing in democracy", and 2) if legitimacy means something different, can we talk about state legitimacy as rooted in something else? In this case, economic performance and governmental responsiveness. Note that the burden of proof is on the proponents of legitimacy based on democratic institutions.

As such, even if I grant you that China would be hundreds of times wealthier or better governed (whatever that means) if it were democratic, it is not evidence against (1) that state legitimacy means something different to democratic governance. Simply put: so what? states that don't live up to their full economic and social potentials are not legitimate? Then what about India or Greece? Kaiser, in fact, offers a large class of legitimate — at least on first impression — regimes to poke at this association. The preponderance of states in history are not democracies, direct or indirect; they cannot all be illegitimate, so take your pick.

However, I will elaborate on two more: polemically, England was not a democracy till the 20th century — 1918 to be exact. (Unless the disenfranchisement of women can be dismissed as an irrelevant deviation in light of...Britain's beautifully idealistic constitutional framework.) And the US lacked free and fair electoral process — much less civil protection and social equality — for much of its racial minorities till the second half of the 20th century, when, well, racism was vanquished once and for all.

How do we then understand the legitimacy of these governments prior to the 20th century? Were these governments legitimate, and to whom? If these were legitimate governments, when (if ever) is a government presiding over an unjust society — and I hope you agree that apartheid states are unjust — deemed illegitimate? Is justice irrelevant, and then why would democracy be a legitimizing factor? If these governments were not illegitimate, why not, when roughly half of the adult population could not and did not vote to legitimize it, as is the case of prewar England — say nothing of the conditions in the colonial and commonwealth territories?

If these were illegitimate states, can we then characterize historic exercises of state powers as mere coercive power dressed up as democratic governance by and for the white male? Absurd! Can these states gain their legitimacy? Obviously! Are these states legitimate when they ultimately redeem themselves through the long arcs of history? Have the US and Britain redeemed themselves?

None of this is to justify China's domestic and foreign policies that genuinely conflict with our values and even our interests. Neither am I requiring that the governments in the US or UK be illegitimate in the present or historically, but I hope I made a pseudo-Socratic point that maybe legitimacy isn't as intuitively straightforward as we might initially think. And applied to China, as the essay points out quite convincingly, how we view, among the facets of CCP governance, the exercise of state power ought not to be similarly narrow.

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