Constituency Service under Nondemocratic Rule: Evidence from China
Why do nondemocratic regimes provide constituency service? This study develops theory based on a national field audit of China’s “Mayor’s Mailbox,” an institution that allows citizens to contact local political officials. Analyzing government responses to over 1,200 realistic appeals from putative c...
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| Format: | Article |
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University of Chicago Press
2019
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/120799 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3623-7953 |
| _version_ | 1826190072625496064 |
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| author | Distelhorst, Greg Hou, Yue |
| author2 | Sloan School of Management |
| author_facet | Sloan School of Management Distelhorst, Greg Hou, Yue |
| author_sort | Distelhorst, Greg |
| collection | MIT |
| description | Why do nondemocratic regimes provide constituency service? This study develops theory based on a national field audit of China’s “Mayor’s Mailbox,” an institution that allows citizens to contact local political officials. Analyzing government responses to over 1,200 realistic appeals from putative citizens, we find that local service institutions in China are comparably responsive to similar institutions in democracies. Two key predictors of institutional quality are economic modernization and the intensity of local social conflict. We explain these findings by proposing a demand-driven theory of nondemocratic constituency service; in order to sustain the informational benefits of citizen participation, the responsiveness of service institutions must increase with citizen demand. We then offer supplementary evidence for this theory by analyzing the content of real letters from citizens to local officials in China. Keywords: authoritarian regimes; institutions; constituency service; responsiveness; China |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T08:34:37Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/120799 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T08:34:37Z |
| publishDate | 2019 |
| publisher | University of Chicago Press |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1207992022-09-30T09:44:22Z Constituency Service under Nondemocratic Rule: Evidence from China Distelhorst, Greg Hou, Yue Sloan School of Management Distelhorst, Greg Why do nondemocratic regimes provide constituency service? This study develops theory based on a national field audit of China’s “Mayor’s Mailbox,” an institution that allows citizens to contact local political officials. Analyzing government responses to over 1,200 realistic appeals from putative citizens, we find that local service institutions in China are comparably responsive to similar institutions in democracies. Two key predictors of institutional quality are economic modernization and the intensity of local social conflict. We explain these findings by proposing a demand-driven theory of nondemocratic constituency service; in order to sustain the informational benefits of citizen participation, the responsiveness of service institutions must increase with citizen demand. We then offer supplementary evidence for this theory by analyzing the content of real letters from citizens to local officials in China. Keywords: authoritarian regimes; institutions; constituency service; responsiveness; China 2019-03-07T16:03:11Z 2019-03-07T16:03:11Z 2017-05 2019-02-07T15:52:52Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 0022-3816 1468-2508 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/120799 Distelhorst, Greg, and Yue Hou. “Constituency Service Under Nondemocratic Rule: Evidence from China.” The Journal of Politics 79, 3 (July 2017): 1024–1040 © 2017 Southern Political Science Association https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3623-7953 http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/690948 Journal of Politics Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ application/pdf University of Chicago Press Other repository |
| spellingShingle | Distelhorst, Greg Hou, Yue Constituency Service under Nondemocratic Rule: Evidence from China |
| title | Constituency Service under Nondemocratic Rule: Evidence from China |
| title_full | Constituency Service under Nondemocratic Rule: Evidence from China |
| title_fullStr | Constituency Service under Nondemocratic Rule: Evidence from China |
| title_full_unstemmed | Constituency Service under Nondemocratic Rule: Evidence from China |
| title_short | Constituency Service under Nondemocratic Rule: Evidence from China |
| title_sort | constituency service under nondemocratic rule evidence from china |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/120799 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3623-7953 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT distelhorstgreg constituencyserviceundernondemocraticruleevidencefromchina AT houyue constituencyserviceundernondemocraticruleevidencefromchina |