Recently, the paper titled “Double trouble? Effects of social conflict and foreign investment on consultative authoritarianism in China” with Dr. Jinjin Wu (Assistant Professor in the Department of Public Administration in the College of Management at Shenzhen University) as the corresponding author was officially accepted by Political Science (SSCI, latest impact factor 1.650). This paper was co-authored with Professor Baogang He (Professor in the School of Humanities and Social Science at Deakin University) and Kaiping Zhang (Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Tsinghua University).

    A proliferation of public consultation in China signals a more “deliberative turn” in local governance and fosters some level of regime support (He & Warren, 2011; Truex, 2017). It remains contested whether Chinese public consultation practices can be called local deliberative democracy or a sort of consultative authoritarianism. Yet, these different evaluations lack an appreciation of regional variations as well as underlying drivers. This study fills the gap by developing a political economy approach and constructing panel data of 36 Chinese cities over 12 years to empirically explain the paradoxical development of public consultation within the Chinese authoritarian regime. The research reveals that the functional purpose of appeasing social conflicts serves a key underlying incentive that drives China’s deliberative turn, yet heavier dependence on foreign investment in a local economy hinders public consultation. Content analysis of 3082 public hearing documents further shows that adoption of public hearings varies by regions with economically and politically advantaged municipalities being more likely to adopt consultative institutions for transparency. This study brings together the scholarship of contentious politics and deliberative politics while offering a nuanced understanding of regional differences of public consultation.

    Journal of Contemporary Politics, published by Routledge, is an international peer-reviewed journal which examines the intersection of national and international politics. Recognizing that the boundaries between domestic and international politics are inherently porous, it provides a platform for studies which problematize, cross or transcend the disciplinary division between international relations and comparative politics. As the top journal in political science, it publishes scholarly work which explores international interactions without ignoring the role of national and local trends, and/or explains national difference while being sensitive broader trends in contemporary global politics. This is the first paper published in Contemporary Politics by the faculty of College of Management at Shenzhen University.