Friday, March 14th, 2014 Does Public Opinion Matter in the Foreign Policies of Authoritarian Regimes: The China Case

Description

This is a talk about a project in progress. There is a common claim in the media, think tank, and academic worlds that popular nationalism in China is on the rise and that this constrains the foreign policy options of China’s leaders in more hard line directions. Indeed, popular nationalism is one explanation for the alleged “new assertiveness” in China’s diplomacy since 2009/2010. This claim, however, rests in turn a couple of additional claims: 1) that popular nationalism is “rising”, and 2) that an un-elected leadership controlling a powerful internal security system is sensitive to public opinion. My talk considers evidence about “rising nationalism” and then turns its attention mainly to the second conclusion. The main problem with this second claim is that the mechanisms by which a single-party regime might be sensitive to public opinion are unclear. The talk lays out several possible mechanisms or conditions under which single-party regimes might be sensitive to public opinion: political costs in elite political rivalry; legitimacy crisis and the fear of social instability; leaders’ views on the legitimacy of public opinion; the rise of policy experts. This research project is not far enough along to present full blown tests of these alternative mechanisms. Rather I outline some preliminary evidence that might be consistent with these different mechanisms and suggest what needs to be done to test them more fully.