Economic Modernization and the Adaptation of Political Institutions: A Study in the Development of Municipal People's Congresses in China.

摘要

Why does regional variation exist in the development of Local People's Congresses in China? Taking Municipal People's Congresses (MPC) as cases, this research explores the relationship between economic modernization and the development of People's Congresses (PC). Based on quantitative analysis on national data, it reveals that, firstly, the higher the level of economic development, the higher the levels of MPCs' development in legislation, supervision and representation; secondly, the larger the proportion of the gross product of secondary and tertiary industries in GDP, the higher the development levels of MPCs' legislation and representation.;This research also analyzes abundant qualitative and quantitative data to reveal the causal mechanism and finds that, firstly, as the modernization of economics, MPCs have stronger motivations to promote their legislation, supervision and representation for dealing with the challenges brought by economic modernization; secondly, economic modernization also increases the finanicial and human resources owned by MPCs, which is beneficial to the development of their capacities. Thus economic modernization can make contributions to PCs' development.;The dissertation argues that the development of Chinese MPC is the Adaptation of Political Institutions. On the one hand, though going away from the image of "rubber stamp", PCs are still under robust leadership of Chinese Communist Party (CCP). On the other hand, PCs' development adjusts the relationship between PCs and governments, procuratorates or courts, as well as the relationship between PCs and the Public, strengthening institutional horizontal and vertical accountability. To a certain degree, the adaptation of political institutions restrains officials' illegal behaviors and the abuse of power, improves the performance of governments, strengthens governments' responsiveness and decreases social contradiction, thus has positive effects on social stability and regime legitimacy, which makes the CCP regime be better adapted to the changing external environment caused by economic modernization. The main discoveries of this dissertation illustrate that, on the one hand, just as many studies have revealed, the process of economic modernization is possible to cause social instability as well as the collapse of authoritarian regimes; on the other hand, economic modernization also promotes the adaptation of political institutions in authoritarianism, which is beneficial to social stability and regime survival.;Nevertheless, some limitations still inevitably exist in such adaptation of political institutions. As economics continues to be more and more modernized, the demand for politically institutional adaptation may increase, but the remaining space for such adaptation will probably turn narrower and narrower. Under this condition, it is still unknown whether or not authoritarian rulers are able to keep utilizing the adaptation of political institutions to consolidate their regimes.