IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/pal/intecp/978-1-349-24076-0_8.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Democracy, Authoritarianism and Development in China

In: Democracy and Development

Author

Listed:
  • Carl Riskin

    (City University of New York and Columbia University)

  • Michio Morishima

    (London School of Economics and Political Science)

Abstract

The concept of democracy does not have roots in traditional Chinese thought. Quite the contrary, much of the long Chinese political tradition is authoritarian and bureaucratic in nature. State Confucianism strove to achieve a moral consensus for society based on an official orthodoxy accepted by all. Even when modem ideas about democracy came to China in the early part of this century, they tended, as Whyte (1992, p. 60) shows, to stress the benefit to the state of having popular support and not the legitimacy of pluralism, the competition of ideas or the notion of proper and reasonable interests of individuals. Nathan (1985) describes democracy as presented ‘as an ornament of modernity and an asset for rulers’. These traditions and emphases have found resonance in the treatment of ideas about democracy in the People’s Republic.

Suggested Citation

  • Carl Riskin & Michio Morishima, 1995. "Democracy, Authoritarianism and Development in China," International Economic Association Series, in: Amiya Kumar Bagchi (ed.), Democracy and Development, chapter 8, pages 215-234, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:intecp:978-1-349-24076-0_8
    DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-24076-0_8
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:intecp:978-1-349-24076-0_8. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.