Consultative Democracy or Consultative Authoritarianism? Understanding Chinese Consultative Politics

This book reconceptualizes the faddish idea of "deliberative democracy" in China's authoritarianism. By firstly introducing and analyzing some core questions in deliberative democracy theory, this book further disentagles a perplexing relationship between and among deliberation, democracy, authoritarianism and empowerment of those core concepts in China, how deliberation could possibly coexist with authoritarianism, and how the former is likely to reconsolidates the latter by revising a positive relation of "deliberation promotes democracy", and this conclusion is being institutionalized in China's politics. To avoid a loosely define of deliberation, this book respectively analyzes the deliberation and some other synonyms like consultation, participation, and negotiation, etc. in different hierarchies, power-relations, and geographical division. The emprical studies of the legislative consultation and grassroots deliberation in China indicate a vivid picture of how deliberations are being practiced, as well as their roles in Chinese politics.