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Southern Political Science Association
Why Do People Vote in Semicompetitive Elections in China?Author(s): Jie Chen and Yang ZhongSource: The Journal of Politics, Vol. 64, No. 1 (Feb., 2002), pp. 178-197Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Southern Political ScienceAssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2691670
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Why
Do
People Vote
in
Semicompetitive
Elections in China? 179
and 1999a). Thus, some China scholars consider these local elections to be
only semicompetitive Shi 1999a, 1118).
Since the promulgationof the new electoral law, many Chinese citizens have
voted in such
semicompetitiveelections. But why do people vote in these local
elections that are considered,
at best,
to
be semicompetitive? What subjective
orientations motivate Chinesepeople to go to the voting booth? The answers to
these
questions have a lot
to
do with an understandingof the nature of the
currentelectoral system in
China,
and hence with the
prediction
of
significant
effects
of the
system
on
sociopolitical development.
To
address these critical questions, Tianjian Shi has submitted (1999a) im-
portant findings about Chinese voters'
subjective
motivations in
semicompeti-
tive elections. From a
nationwide survey conducted between December 1990
and
January 1991,
Shi
finds that those who
support democracy
and democrati-
zation,
who
strongly
believe in
their
own
competence
to understand
and
influ-
ence
politics (i.e., internalefficacy),and who want
to
see corrupt eaderspunished
tend to vote in such semicompetitive elections as those for local people's con-
gresses. Therefore, Shi
concludes that people vote in semicompetitive election
. .
.
not because
they
are identified with the
regime,
and not because
they
have
affective
attachmentsto
political authority 1999a, 1135). Instead, they
vote
in
those elections to pursue their own interests: to punish corrupt leaders and
to pursue democratic values
(1999a, 1129).
But the results from our
sample survey
conducted
in
the
Beijing
area
(Bei-
jing dicu)
in
1995
(see Appendix)
either
directly
contradict or
significantly
differ from Shi's
findings about
the
relationships
between
voting
and
subjective
orientations, although
the voter turnout rate in our
survey
is
very
similar to
(slightly
lower
than)
that
in Shi's
survey (see
Table
1).
On the one
hand,
we
find that people with stronger democratic orientation and a keener sense of
internal
efficacy
are
less likely
to
vote in such
semicompetitive
elections as
those for local
people's congresses.
On the
other hand,
we find that those who
are
identified
with
the regime and have affective attachments
to the political
authority
are more
likely
to
vote in
those elections.
TABLE 1
Voter
Turnout Rates
of the Two
Samples
Beijing Survey,
1995
China
Survey,
1990-1991
Category
%
(N)
%
(N)
Voted
58.5
(385)
61.6
(1,477)
Didn't
vote 40.1
(264)
37.7
(904)
Don't remember
1.4
(9)
.8
(18)
Total 100
(658)
100.1
(2,399)
Note: The
figures
for
China
Survey,
1990-1991 come
from
Shi
(1999a, 1123).
8/12/2019 Why Do People Vote in Semicompetitive Elections in China
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180
Jie
Chen
and YangZhong
In order to supplement
and
improve our current understanding of voters'
subjectivemotivations
in
semicompetitive elections
in
China, we reexamine the
important ssues that Shi has tackled. In this reexamination, we present and
analyze those significant
contradictionsbetween our findings and those of Shi.
Specifically, we first discuss the nature and
salient characteristics
of
local peo-
ple's congress elections that we
believe are crucial for us to understandvoters'
attitudes and behaviors, then we presentthe
results from
our
tests of Shi's key
hypotheses about
the
effects of voters'
subjective
motivations on their
voting
behavior, and finally we draw some theoretical implications from the differ-
ences between our findings and Shi's.
Our analysis here differs from Shi's
study (1999a)
in certain
respects,
and
hence it does not replicate his study.
First,
in
terms of
the
scope of substantive
issues, while Shi's study deals with
voting behavior in both noncompetitive and
semicompetitive elections, this analysis focuses on voters' behaviors in
only
semicompetitive elections-local people's
congress
elections.
Second,
with re-
gard
to
the
type
of
empirical evidence,
while our
data
come from
a
single
lo-
cale,
the
Beijing area (including both urban
and rural
sections),2 Shi's
data
are
from a nationwide survey. Although we cannot fully reproduceShi's analysis
due to
the
difference between the
two
data
sets,
we
are
able to offer a
more
in-depth analysis of
the
relevanthypotheses
in
the Beijing area.
This
is
because
our sample was designed to be representativeof this
politically important
lo-
cale, and,
in turn, our
analysis
can
supplement
our
understanding
of the
impor-
tant
issues dealt with by those hypotheses.3Finally,
with
respect to questionnaire
construction,while
most
of
the
questions
used
in
this
analysis
are
very
similar
to
those used
in
Shi's
analysis,
none of
the
questions
in these
two
analyses
is
exactly
the same in their
approaches,
wordings,
and scales. But
in
essence,
the
questions employed
in
this study
are
certainly
valid for
measuring
the
same
concepts as those analyzed
in
Shi's
study.
In
sum, despite
these differences
between
Shi's
and our
analyses,
we believe
that
our
analysis
can make
signifi-
cant contributions
o
the
study
of the
same
important
ssues
by reexamining
the
major propositions
and
findings put
forth in
Shi's
study.
The
CCP's
Constraints
and
Voters' Choices
in
Local People's Congress
Elections
We do not
disagree
with
Shi
(1999a, 1116-18)
that
the
post-Mao
electoral
partial
reforms have
significantly
liberalized such local
people's congress
elec-
2Our sample site, the Beijing area, consists
of
8 urban
or
suburban
districts
and
10
rural
coun-
ties or districts (see also Beijing Statistical Bureau 1996, 20).
'To reexamine mportant ssues and findings on mass support
or
political and
economic
change
in the former USSR, similarly, Arthur Miller and his associates (see Miller, Hesli and Reisinger,
1994) compared their findings from the data collected from three former Soviet republics with
those of Finifter and Mickiewicz (1992) that were collected from a survey of the
entire former
USSR.
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Why
Do
People
Vote in
Semicompetitive
Elections
in
China?
181
tions (which Shi and others characterize as semicompetitive elections ), as
citizens now, for example, can nominate candidates and have a choice among
multiple candidates for each contested
position,
and
as some candidates, occa-
sionally, indirectly express their
own views on specific policy issues (or low-
politics issues).4 Nonetheless, in
order to reassess the issues in debate, we
need
to
have a
more adequate
understanding
of both CCP's constraints and
voters'
choices
in these elections, which have all served as today's electoral
environmentunder which voters operate.
CCP's Constraints
The fundamentalmotive of the
CCP leadership to reform the electoral rules
of
people's congresses
and
to maintain the new
rules
has been
twofold. First,
the
CCP leadership
intended
to regain and reinforce the
legitimacy
of its
one-
party rule through the liberalized yet limited local elections (e.g., McCormick
1996, 31; O'Brien 1990, 126; Shi 1999a, 1116). By allowing people to elect
deputies directly to
the
lowest level of
people's congresses,
the
post-Mao
lead-
ers
expected
to create an
image
of the
government's representativeness mong
the
citizens
(McCormick 1996).
Consequently,
the
enhanced
legitimacy
was
supposed
to
help the CCP maintain political stability
in the
society. Only
secondly,
these
electoral reforms were also intended to
heighten
the
efficiency
of the
government(O'Brien 1990,
126), ideally
as the
popularly
lected
dep-
uties act on
behalf
of their constituencies to advocate sensible
policies
and
stop
unpopulargovernmental
decisions at various levels
of
legislatures.
Whetherand
how well this second
objective
has been
achieved through
the
local elections
remains unclear. But
it
must be noted that since the outset of the electoral
reforms, the CCP leaders have
always linked
this
objective
to
their ultimate
political goal: strengthening
the
legitimacy
of the
party leadership (dangde
lingdao) (see e.g.,
Archive
Research Office
1994).
In
short,
it is
very
clear that
all
these
limited
electoral reforms
were
mainly
intended
by
the
ruling party,
the
CCP,
o
strengthen
ts own
legitimacy
by improving
ts own
governability,
rather
than
to
initiate
democratic competitionacross political and ideological divides.
Out of this fundamentalmotive and with its
unchallengeableruling position,
the
CCP leaderships (from Deng
Xiaoping
to
Jiang Zeming)
have
firmly
im-
posed
at least two formidable constraints on
the
partially
reformed
local
peo-
ple's congress elections. One is political constraint.
In order
to
prevent any
organized
and individual
oppositions
from
challenging
its
position
of absolute
rule,
the CCP
has
directly
or
indirectly
controlled
virtually
the entire
process
of
local
people's congress elections:
from
nomination
of
candidates,
to electorate
deliberation,
o the determinationof
final
candidateson the
ballot
(Burns 1999,
591; Halpern 1991, 38).
Such
political
control
has been done
mainly through
'For more detailed discussions on the post-Mao electoral reforms, also see works by Nathan
(1985), Burns (1988), O'Brien (1990, 1994a, 1994b), and McCormick (1996).
8/12/2019 Why Do People Vote in Semicompetitive Elections in China
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182
Jie Chen and YangZhong
the party-dominated, ocal
election committees (Shi and Lei 1999, 21-23). These
committees also control the
final results of the elections via the
so-called three
ups
and three downs
procedure5
in
which the local party
leaderships
eventu-
ally get the voters' consent
for the final candidates placed on the ballot-
most of whom are either
party members or at least obedient to
the party line
(McCormick 1996). Furthermore,no opposition parties or
organizations are
allowed in these elections,
although the so-called democraticparties hathave
long been co-opted by the
CCP may participate in the elections that serve as
showcases of democracywith the Chinese characteristics. As a
result,
with
few
exceptions,6 people'scongress deputiesaremainly politically reliable cad-
res, intellectuals, workers,peasants, and minority representatives
who accept
the
contour of
the
regime
(O'Brien 1994b, 85). Actually,
the
great majority
(about 75%-80%)
of
the winning candidatesare members of the CCP
(McCor-
mick 1996, 39; Wang 1998, 190).7 Thus, under the CCP's tight
political con-
trol, these elections rarelychallenge party power or government
decisions
(O'Brien 1994b, 85).
The other constraint
mposed by
the CCP in these
elections is
an
ideological
one.
The
CCP has
designed
and
implemented
a list of measures
in
order to
preventthe local people's
congress
elections
from becoming
a
forum
spreading
bourgeois
iberal
thoughts
or
political views contrary
to the official
ideology
(Shi 1999b, 395).8
First of
all,
the
party prohibits any large-scale
or
publi-
cized electoral campaign that is consideredpartof bourgeois
democracy as
opposed
to socialist
democracy ),
and
it
requires
that all electoral activities
and deliberationsbe carried out within a limited
scope (e.g.,
work unit or dan-
wei)
under firm control
by
the
party-dominated
election
committee
(Shi
and
Lei 1999; Wang 1998). By
doing so,
the CCP has almost eliminated
any
effec-
tive
channels
for
potential dissidents to articulate
their
dissenting opinions
in
such local elections.
Consequently,
as McCormick
observed,
with the
excep-
tion of
a few isolated cases,
.
.
. candidates [could not] campaign in the usual
sense of that
word,
and
they
could
typically give only
a
few-minute-long
self-
introductionstating mainly
that they
were
the sort of persons recommended
n
5In this procedure,the initial lists of nominees generated from electorate deliberations are sub-
mitted to the local election committees, considered and returnedback to the electors, who further
deliberate and then pass the list back up to the election committees, and so forth for threeups and
three downs (McCormick 1996, 40).
6In
his recent works, Shi has noted these exceptions by citing two famous cases of two prince-
lings, Chen Yuan and Chen Haosu, who lost in their local elections (see Shi 1997, 36; Shi 1999a,
note 6, 1120). But, as other China analysts argue (e.g. O'Brien 1994b, 85; McCormick 1996, 39;
Nathan 1997, 235), these exceptions still remain exceptions after all and have not yet led to a
fundamental or qualitative) change in the political orientation of winning candidates as a
whole.
7For
example, the results of
the
local people's congress
elections
in
1993
indicated that a
little
over
80%
of the
winning
candidates were CCP members
(Wang 1998, 190).
8Shi also notes
that
electoral reforms adopted
in
1979
enlivened elections
for local
people's
congresses
but did not
signal
a
change
in the official
ideology,
which
is
hostile to free
expression
and, more important, o popular sovereignty (1999b, 395).
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Why Do People
Vote in
Semicompetitive
Elections in China? 183
the official guidelines (McCormick 1996,
41). Not only has the CCP severely
limited the scope and format of electoral
activities and deliberations, it has
made relentless efforts to control the substance of the activities and delibera-
tions in order to make sure that no
political view contraryto CCP's four car-
dinal
principles 9 neaks nto the local elections.
Especially
since the
inconvenient
appearances of a few non-Marxist
candidates (who strongly advocated some
radical political views deviating from the
party line) in the 1980 local elections
(Halpern 1991, 46; O'Brien 1990, 129),1o
the CCP has instructed all electoral
committees to watch
and prevent any speeches threatening
he
party'sleader-
ship
and the nation's
stability
and
unity
(Wang 1998, 279).
In sum, with scattered exceptions in
1979-1980,
as Nathan
(1997, 235)
rightly concludes, local people's congress
elections so far have not turned into
competitive campaigns owing to tight party
control. Thus,
as
mentioned above,
the overwhelming net outcomes of these elections have been very much in ac-
cordance with CCP's expectations.
Politically, most
of the
winning
candidates
are party members, none of them comes from
organized oppositions,
and
very
few
of
them are independent candidates without the
party's support
or
ap-
proval.Ideologically,very few of the
winning candidatesadvocatepolitical
views
different from the
party line, although
some
of
them made constructive
sug-
gestions
on some
specific
local
policy
issues.
Voters'
Choices
Despite these political
and
ideological
constraints,
the
current electoral
sys-
tem still offers voters two kinds of choices in
local people's congress
elections.
One
is
that,
as mentioned
above,
voters can
have
alternative
candidates
(within
the
political
and
ideological
constraints set
by
the
CCP).
In other
words,
while
voters
cannot
find or vote for
any candidates who
challenge
the fundamental
partyline in most cases, they can choose better or
the
least
worst candidateson
the CCP-sanitized ballots. More
important,
the
overwhelming majority
of the
final candidates on the ballots differ only in
degree
rather
than
in
kind: they
might
be
slightly
different
in their
opinions
only
on some
specific
local
policy
issues or in their
popularity
I
among
the
voters.
9The four cardinal principles are: (1) supporting CCP's leadership, (2) adhering to socialism,
(3) upholding Marxism-Leninism-MaoZedong Thought,
and (4) maintaining proletariatdictator-
ship (see Wang 1999, 57).
'0For example, in 1980 at Beijing University and Hunan
Normal University, some candidates
advocated some radical ideas in publicized electoral campaigns in local people's congress elec-
tions (see Nathan 1985, 193-223; McCormick 1996, 40-41).
Shi suggests that semicompetitive elections only allow voters
to
punish unpopular
leaders
(1999a, 1133).
We
argue that whether the candidates are popular
or
unpopularamong
voters does
not matter very much if all the candidates are directly or indirectly chosen by
the CCP and share
the same fundamental deology.
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184 Jie Chen and YangZhong
The other choice available to voters is to abstain from the elections
without
penalty.
In the
pre-reform elections,
the
people were coerced by
the
regime to
vote (see Townsend 1969; Chen 2000, 649). But in today's partiallyreformed
or
semicompetitive elections, they
are
given a choice between voting and non-
voting. In otherwords, today'svoters have freedom of nonvoting n the
elections.
With
this freedom, those who dislike the fundamentalpolitical and
ideological
orientations sanctioned by the party may choose nonvoting as protest.
Con-
versely, those who support (or are least indifferent about) those political
and
ideological orientationstend to participate n these local elections by
choice.
On
the
one
hand, local people's congress elections offer the electorate two
limited choices: a choice of multiple candidates (within the party limit) for
each
position
and a choice
of abstaining
from
voting.
On the
other hand,
these
elections operate under two severe constraints-political and ideological.
These
constraints
and
choices so far, we believe, have constituted fundamentalrules
of the
game
in the
local people's congress elections. Under these rules,
why do
people
vote? This
question
is the focus
of
the
analysis
that
follows.
Subjective
Motivations for
Voting and Nonvoting
in
the Local People's Congress Elections
The
underlying assumption guiding our reexaminationof
the
subjective mo-
tivations
for
voting
and
nonvoting
behaviors
in
local
people's congress
elec-
tions is mainly derived from a combination of the rational-choice model of
voting behavior (e.g., Downs 1957; Gilison 1968; Karklins 1986; Tullock
1968)
and the
theory of institutionalconstraints e.g.,
Cox
1987, 1990; Ikenberry
1988;
Kaminski1992;North 1995 and 1996;Thelen and Steinmo 1992). The rational-
choice
model simply suggests that
as
rational actors,
citizens
vote
if the ex-
pected
material
or/and spiritual'2
gains from
voting outweigh
the
expected
costs
(Tullock 1968). Applying
this model
to noncompetitive elections
in
the
former
USSR,
for
example, some scholars argue
that
people may gain expressivevalue
of
protesting against
the
currentregime through nonvotingbehavior(e.g.
Gili-
son
1968;
Karklins
1986).
Basically,
the
theory
of
institutional constraintsargues
that a
political
insti-
tution represents
a
set
of
rules and
a
type of environment
that influences and
even
shapes
the
goals, preferences,
and
strategies
of
political
actors and
the
interaction among the actors (North 1996, 344).
To
supplement
the rational-
choice model, moreover,
this
theory suggests
that institutions
impose
con-
straints on choices the rational actors
may
make
(North 1995, 24).
In
other
words,
the rational actors
must
choose
optimal
actions within the
limits set
by
the
institutions.
When
applying this theory
to
elections,
for
example,
Cox
(1987,
83) argues
that
the
behavior
of
voters
will
depend
on the
particular
voting
12The
spiritual ainshere refer
to
the individual's
atisfaction rom expression
of values through
voting or nonvoting.
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Why
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procedure [or rules] in use: not only may the actual voting
options differ but
the strategy of voters in using these options may also differ.
Based on these two theories, we assume that people choose
either to vote or
not
to
vote in
the
current
local
people's congress
elections to maximize mate-
rial and/or spiritual gains and that these elections, as important
political insti-
tutions controlled and dominated by
the
CCP, symbolize
a series of rules (i.e.,
the
constraints
and the
choices
that we explained above)
that set limits on the
ways people consider and
act to
achieve
the
expected gains.
From this
assump-
tion, we further specify the relationships between voters'
subjective orienta-
tions
on
the one
hand,
and
their voting behaviors on the other.
Democratic
Orientation
Do people vote in the current
local people's congress
elections to promote
democracy?While Shi's (1999a, 1128) finding suggests
that people with stron-
ger
democratic orientationvoted more
in
semicompetitive
elections including
those for local
people's congresses,
we
argue
that
support
for democracy
is
negatively
correlated with
the
likelihood
of
voting
in
such elections.
We
believe
that those who
support democracy may
be
more
alienated
by
the
aforementionedsevere
political
and
ideological constraints mposed by
the
sin-
gle authoritarian arty (i.e.,
the CCP) on the local people's congress elections,
since these constraintsare incompatiblewith their democraticvalues.13As a
result, whether these local
elections are considered to be semi- or non-
competitive,
the
democratic
supporters
end to see
voting
in
such elections
as
going through formality
(zou
xingshi),
which serves only
the
function
of
legitimizing
the
undemocratic,
one-partyrule (e.g., Dong 2000).
Since
voting
in
these
elections
is no
longer mandatory
or
coerced,
it is
reasonable
to
expect
the
democratic supporters
as
rational actors to express
their discontent with
the
CCP's
political
and
ideological
constraints
by abstaining
from
the
local
peo-
ple's congress elections.
In our analysis, democratic orientation is measured by three statements:
4
(1) Currently,
what is needed most
in China
is political
democratization.
(2) Elections
to
governmentalpositions
should be conducted
in
such a
way
that there is more than one candidate
for
each post.
(3) Regardless
of one's
political
belief,
he or
she
is entitled to the same
rights
and
protections
as
anyone
else.
Agreement (including agree
and
stronglyagree )
with
any
one
of these state-
ments is scored as
prodemocratic
(1),
whereas
disagreement
(including
dis-
13Shi
(1999b,
395)
himself
points
out that
the official ideology that is imposed by
the CCP
on
the local electionshas been
hostileto free
expressionand, more importantly,
o popular
overeignty.
14All
these items
are derived from
a survey study of the democratic
values in the former Soviet
Union (Gibson, Duch,
and Tedin 1992)
and modified in accordance with the
current
Chinese
so-
ciopolitical environment.
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186 Jie Chen and YangZhong
agree
and
strongly
disagree )
is scored as nondemocratic
(0).15
A
summary
variable for
democratic orientation
s
derived
from
the respondent'ssum of the
scores on all three items.16
Anti-Corruption Attitude
In
respect to the effect of
anti-corruptionattitude on electoral
behavior,
Shi
(1999a, 1128) has argued
and found that those who are aware of official cor-
ruption and hence want to see
corrupt officials punished tend
to vote in
semi-
competitive
elections
(including
elections for local
people's
congresses).
But
there are
at
least two major reasons to
support
a more
moderate
argument hat
the
desire to punish or remove corrupt officials from their current
positions of
leadership does not necessarily relate to voting behavior in local
people's con-
gress elections. First, given the
authoritarian ature
of the
Chinese polity, most
official
corruption
has taken
place among government (or
administrative)
and
party
officials who have
so-called
real
power
that
can
be
used
(or
abused)
for
their
own
personal gains (e.g.,
Chen
1999; Gong 1997; Kwong
1997;
Liu
1998).
But
since most deputies
to
local
people's congresses
are not
government
offi-
cials or full-time
professional
politicians, they
do not have
such
real
power
and
hence are not in the
strategicposition
of
being corrupt.
Therefore,
the
depu-
ties to and
candidates
for
local people's congresses
can
hardly
be
direct
targets
of
anti-corruption
entiment
of
the masses.
Second, the most
effective
and
common way
for
ordinarycitizens to
identify
and
punish corrupt
officials is
to
report (usually anonymously)corruption
cases
to such institutions as
discipline inspection committees and centers for report-
ing economic crimes, which
are charged with power
to
investigate
and
pros-
ecute
those cases
(Sun
1999, 6).
These institutions have so far been considered
the
most
rewarding though
not
completely risk-free)
channels
for the
public
to
express
their
complaints
about official
corruption.Between 1995 and
2000,
for
example,
about 98% of convicted official
corruptioncases
in the
entire
country
resulted from
the clues provided to these institutions (CCTV
2000). This
is
in
part
because since
the
1989
Tiananmen
incident,
the
top
CCP
leadership
has
given
these institutions more
judicial
and
administrativepower to combat
cor-
ruption, especially
at
middle and local
levels,
in
order
to
restore and boost its
legitimacy with the public
(Baum 1994, 317-18; Cao 1996;
Li
1996).
As a
result, voting
in
local people's
congress
elections becomes
a
much
less,
if
not
the
least,
attractive
means
for
voters
(as
rational
actors)
o
fight
official
corruption.
Based on these two
reasons, therefore,
we
expect
the
anti-corruption
senti-
ment
not to
be
significantly
correlated
with
voting
or
nonvoting
in the
local
people's congress
elections. Like
Shi's
instrument,anti-corruption
entiment
in
15A similar scoring scheme is also used in Shi's study (1999a, 1128).
6The reliability analysis for these three items shows that the inter-item correlations are moder-
ate, ranging from .313 to .437. This set of three items yields a reliability coefficient (alpha) of .76.
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Why
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People
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China? 187
this study is measured by one question asking respondents whether to their
knowledge official-corruptionproblems
have been adequatelyaddressed.
A
pos-
itive answer to this question is coded 0,
while a negative answer is coded 1.
Internal
Efficacy
Are
those who have a high degree of confidence in their ability to under-
stand and influence politics (i.e.,
internal efficacy) more likely to vote
in local
people's congress elections? Contrary o Shi's
proposition,
we
argue that under
the current electoral system for local
people's congresses, people with strong
internalefficacy17 are less likely to vote.
Shi argues (1999a, 1130) that
in
China internal
efficacy,
rather
han external
efficacy (beliefs in government'sresponsiveness to citizens' demands), moti-
vates
people
to
vote
in
such not-so-perfect
elections as
those
for
local
peo-
ple's congresses.
This is
because,
according
to Shi
(1999a, 1130), people
with
strong
internal
efficacy
use this
imperfect
electoral
system
to
engineer po-
litical liberalization. As we discussed
above, however,
the current local
peo-
ple's congresses
are
politically
and
ideologically
constrained
by
the CCP so
that any ideas and initiatives deviatingfrom the party line are suppressed with
few
exceptions. Therefore,
it
seems to be more reasonable to
argue
that
people
who
believe
in their
own ability
to
understand
as
well
as to influence
politics
in
contemporaryChina are more likely to turn away from the ballot box and to
find meaningful ways (other than
voting)
to realize their own ideas
or
ideals.
As
Bahry
and Silver
(1990, 827) suggest,
a
greater
sense of internal
efficacy
might be an importantresource that would allow
someone to
cope
with the
risks of unconventional activism
(versus such conventional
activism as vot-
ing). Therefore,we expect that those
who
have a
strong
sense
of internal
effi-
cacy tend to be less likely to go to the
polls.
In
our study, we use one
straightforward
tatement to
capture
the
respon-
dent's sense of internal
efficacy:
I
believe
I
have
quite adequate
understand-
ing of and ability to make some difference in the situations of my work unit
and/or my community (e.g., neighborhood
and
district).
The
respondents
were
asked
to
assess
their
levels of internal
efficacy
on a
four-point
scale where 1
stands
for
no
efficacy ( strongly
disagree )
and
4
refers
to
strong efficacy
( stronglyagree ).
Regime
Support
From his
findings about
the
electoral
effects of such
subjective
orientations
as democraticvalue, anti-corruption entiment and internalefficacy, Shi infers
that people vote
in
semicompetitive elections . . . not because they
are identi-
fied with the
regime,
and
not
because
they
have affective
attachments o
polit-
17In our analysis, internal efficacy refers to the feeling that individual political action does
have, or can have, an impact upon the political process (Campbell, Gurin and Miller 1954, 187).
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188 Jie Chen and YangZhong
ical authority Shi 1999a, 1135). While Shi does not test his strong inference
directly against empirical evidence, here we
utilize
our Beijing data to reexam-
ine his important nference about the relationship between regime supportand
voting behavior
in
such semicompetitive elections as those for local
people's
congresses.
Regime support in our study is defined as the diffused or generalized
at-
tachments members of a polity have for the government, its values, and the
political system
in
general (Macridis
and
Burg 1991, 8-12).
In
their study
of
Soviet mass participation,Bahryand Silver (1990, 828) arguethat peoplewho
concur with the
fundamental
values of the Soviet
regime
should be more
in-
volved
in
compliant political
and social
activity,
since
they
would have more
of
a normative stake
in
the system.
Of the institutionalized
political
activities
in
contemporaryChina, voting
in
local people's congress elections seems to be
one of the best channels for such a
compliant
act. This is
because,
as our
earlier
discussion
on
the
ideological
and
political
constraints
n
these elections
indicates, the CCP's normative values and political leadership still prevail
in
the elections. Thus, voting
in
the elections can be considered
an act
to
comply
with these norms and
the
political leadership, especially
when
voting
is not
coerced by
the
regime. Contrary
o Shi's inference mentioned
above,
therefore
we
expect that
those who
support
the
regime's
norms and
the
political
system
as a
whole tend to
be more
likely
to vote
in
these elections.
To capture respondents' support for the regime, we used four statements
as
follows:
(1)
I am
proud to live under the currentpolitical system.
(2)
I
have an obligation to support the currentgovernment.
(3)
I
have respect
for
the political
institutions
in
China
today.
(4)
I
feel that my personal values are the same as those advocated by
the
government.
Items 1 and 4 are designed to detect the respondents'affect for the values/
norms of the regime, while items 2 and 3 are intendedto tap into their support
for
political
institutions and the
political system
as
a
whole.
Disagreement
(in-
cluding
both
strongly disagree
and
disagree )
with
any
one of these state-
ments is
coded 0, whereas agreement (including agree
and
stronglyagree )
is
coded
1. These four items were then combined
to
form
an
additive
index
of
regime support.
8
To summarizebriefly, we have hypothesizedthat those who have
a
stronger
democratic orientation
and
a
keener
sense of internal
efficacy
are
less
likely
to
vote in such semicompetitive elections as those for local people's congresses,
while those who are
supportive
of the
regime
are more
likely
to vote
in the
18Our eliability analysis for these four
items shows that the inter-itemcorrelationsare generally
moderate, ranging from
.332 to .563. This set
of four items produces a reliability coefficient (al-
pha) of .78.
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elections. We have also hypothesized that the anti-corruptionsentiment
is not
significantly correlatedwith voting or nonvoting
in the
local people's congress
elections.
Multivariate Analysis
Table 2 presents a logistic regression
model to capture the effects
of the
subjective orientations (specified above) on voting behaviors
in
local people's
congress elections.
In
order o assess whether hese subjective orientations
affect
voting
behavior
independently
of some objective (in a relative sense)
factors,
we also include such
demographic
variablesas a person'sage, gender, education,
and
residency. Overall,
the
results
from this multivariateanalysis confirm our
expectations explained above and contradict or differ from those presented
in
Shi's
(1999a)
recent work.'9
First, contrary to Shi's finding, the results
in
Table
4
clearly indicate
that
those who are more supportive
of democratic values and more confident in
their capability of understanding
and influencing public affairs are less likely
to
vote
in
local people's congress elections. From these findings,
we can draw
at
least
two
important implications, contrasting
with Shi's
argument (1999a)
that people vote
in
these semicompetitive elections to pursue their
own inter-
ests
and facilitate democratization.
One is that such a legitimate participatory
act as
voting
in
local
people's
congress
elections
may
still be
very
much
un-
acceptable
to the
democratic supporters
and politically confident
citizens as a
means to achieve their political objectives.
The other implication is thatnonvot-
ing
in
these elections could
have been used by this group as
a
sort
of passive
protest or boycott against the current
electoral system.20
Second, contrary
o
Shi's strong
inference that
people
vote
in
semicompet-
itive elections ... not because they are identified with the regime,
and not
because
they
have affective
attachmentsto
political authority 1999a, 1135),
the
results from our multivariateanalysis show
that those who are more
sup-
portive
of the
political regime
under
the CCP
are
more
likely
to
go
to the vot-
ing booth.
This
finding implies
that although he current egime
no
longer
coerces
people
to
vote,
the CCP
can
still draw
a lot of
political support
from those
who
vote.
Thus,
local
people's congress
elections seem
to work to boost the
legiti-
macy
of the CCP.
Finally,
as distinct from Shi's (1999a, 1128-29) finding
that
the desire
to
remove corruptofficials motivates people
to vote
in
semicompetitive
elections
(including
local
people's congress elections),
the
results
from
this
multivariate
19Thebivariate
relationships
between each of the independent
variables and the
dependent vari-
able are fully consistent with the
results of the multivariate
analysis. Upon request,
full information
on the bivariaterelationships is
available from the
authors.
20Some early studies (e.g., Bahry
and Silver 1990;
Karklins
1986)
of
political
participation
n
the former Soviet
Union also suggest that nonvoting
seems to be a form of protest.
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190 Jie Chen and YangZhong
TABLE
2
Logistic Regression of
Voter Turnout on Subjective Motivations
Voting
in Local
People's
Congress Elections
Estimated Standard
IndependentVariable
Coefficient Error
Age (18-76)
.036*** .008
Age squared
-.001* .000
Sex
(F
=
0;
M
=
1) .169 .185
Education .134 .124
Residence
(Rural
=
0; Urban l)a .023
.016
Democratic orientation -.338*** .096
Regime support .401*** .129
Internalefficacy
-. 192** .074
Anti-corruptionsentiment
.109 .204
Constant
-3.106*** .701
-2
Log-likelihood 685.833
Model
Chi-square 66.879***
Degrees
of freedom
9
N
591
aWe
used the same indicatoras thatemployed in Shi's study,householdregistration, o measure
the
respondent'sresidency. *p