The Rise of Grassroots Civil Society under One-Party Rule: The Case of China's Homeowner Associations

abstract:Conventional wisdom holds that one-party regimes are intrinsically hostile to civil society because organized citizens can threaten the regime's political dominance. Contrary to this view, the authors argue that genuinely voluntary civil society organizations may be tolerated, or even actively promoted, by governments in a one-party system when those organizations can help to efficiently resolve intrasocietal distributional conflicts arising from economic modernization. Using China's homeowner associations (hoas) as a case, the article demonstrates that local authorities are more likely to promulgate policies that encourage the development of self-organized hoas when citizens frequently call upon the authorities to intervene and adjudicate their disputes with property development and management companies. An instrumental variables estimation suggests that the relationship is likely to be causal, and additional analyses on mechanisms reveal that citizens' complaints are most effective in eliciting pro-hoa policies when they are targeted at business rather than government actors. These findings highlight an important function of civil society organizations in street-level governance and offer a nuanced interpretation of how pluralistic elements may emerge in nonliberal systems.