Thinking Beyond Formal Institutions: Why Local Governments in China
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Thinking Beyond Formal Institutions: Why Local Governments in China Tolerate Underground Protestant Churches By Marie-Eve Reny A Thesis Submitted in Conformity with the Requirements for the degree of a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Department of Political Science University of Toronto September 2011 © Copyright by Marie-Eve Reny (2012) Thinking Beyond Formal Institutions: Why Local Governments in China Tolerate Underground Protestant Churches PhD, 2012 Marie-Eve Reny Department of Political Science University of Toronto ABSTRACT That authoritarian regimes adopt various strategies of societal control to secure their resilience has been widely explored in comparative politics. The scholarship has emphasized regimes’ reliance upon tactics as diverse as cooptation, economic and social policy reforms, and multiparty elections. Yet, existing comparative studies have predominantly focused on formal institutions, largely ignoring authoritarian states’ resort to informal rules as effective governance and regime preservation strategies. Local governments in China have tolerated underground Protestant churches, and in doing so, they have failed to enforce the central government’s policy of religious cooptation. This dissertation explores the reasons underlying local government tolerance of underground churches. I argue that accommodative informal institutions emerge out of a bargaining process involving agents (state and society) with a mutually compatible set of interests. Both parties need to reduce uncertainty about the other’s political intentions, and for that reason, they are likely to choose to cooperate strategically with one another. On the one hand, local officials view policies of religious cooptation as ineffective to curb the expansion of underground religion, and as increasingly risky to enforce in a context where an extensive use of coercion could be subject to severe professional sanctions. On the other hand, underground pastors seek to maximize their autonomy under authoritarian constraints; to that extent, they have used informal compliance as a strategy to earn local government acceptance. Compliance manifests itself in four ways: openness to dialogue with local authorities, the proactive sharing of sensitive information about church affairs, gift-giving and -receiving, and the maintenance of a low profile in terms of church size and rhetoric. Strategic cooperation brings benefits to both parties. It provides local public security officials’ with a stable source of intelligence about the underground space, which is key to ensuring an effective management of religious affairs. Moreover, it allows underground churches to remain autonomous from the state and decreases risks that they face coercion. Yet, inasmuch as informal arrangements are self- enforcing and rule-bound, they ultimately serve regime interests by increasing the costs of political mobilization for the compliant clergy, and by accentuating divisions between the latter and politicized pastors. Keywords: institutionalist approach; local governments; repression; informal cooperation; lenience; underground churches; authoritarian regime resilience; China ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would not have been able to write this dissertation without the precious feedback and support of many people and institutions. Jacques Bertrand, my supervisor, has been extremely supportive, and the comments he made on each of my manuscripts, including the dissertation, were always meticulously relevant and insightful. Like Jacques, Lucan A. Way and Joseph Wong showed much enthusiasm about my research very early on in my program. In addition to their invaluable feedback, they always made time for advice when I needed theoretical guidance. Under Jacques, Lucan and Joe’s supervision at the University of Toronto, I could not have been in better hands. I would also like to thank my external examiners, William J. Hurst and Andrew C. Mertha, for taking the time to read my dissertation, for their keen interest in my research, and for their constructive comments on my work. Many individuals and institutions in Canada have facilitated my preparation for fieldwork and my research. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the Fonds du Québec pour la recherche en Sciences sociales (FQRSC), and the Ontario Government Scholarships Program (OGS), for supporting my research at different points of my PhD program at the University of Toronto. I would also like to thank Ethnicity and Democratic Governance (EDG), the Dr. David Chu Program in Asia-Pacific Studies, and the University of Toronto’s School of Graduate Studies for granting me generous fellowships, which made a difference in how I was ultimately able to organize my fieldwork. Without the financial support of these programs, I would not have been able to spend as much time in the field. EDG also organized a workshop on field research for graduate students at Queen’s University, which I was fortunate enough to attend prior to my leaving for the field. Bruce Berman, Zsuzsa Csergo, Leslie Doucet, and Villia Jefremovas dedicated a considerable amount of time reading my proposal and giving me feedback, to make me more ethically and methodologically equipped for research. Without their invaluable help, I would have felt less prepared for the field. At the University of Toronto, I would like to thank Carolynn Branton for her invaluable assistance throughout my PhD program. I would like to thank Amanda Wagner from Information Commons for helping me with the formatting of the manuscript. I am also grateful to Eileen Lam at the Asian Institute, for providing me with office space during the first years of my PhD program, including while I was writing my dissertation proposal. Her generosity was comforting at that very preliminary stage of my research. In the US, I would like to thank Mark Shan for his confidence in my project, and for opening several important doors for me in the field. On the other side of the world, my deepest thanks go to Sun Zhe and Daniel A. Bell, without whom I would not have been able to spend the 2009-2010 academic year at Tsinghua University. I am also thankful to Wang Shaoguang from the Department of Political Science at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, for his kind help in getting me an affiliation at CUHK during the few months I spent in Hong Kong prior to my field research. Eva Pils gave me the privilege to take part in some of her research projects while I was there, and I am grateful for her generosity and helpful advice. I keep fond iii memories of the long discussions we had with Marina Svensson, about China and about doing research there, at a very early point in my fieldwork where it still wasn’t clear in my mind where I was heading. I am grateful to Gao Qi, from the University Services Center at the University of Hong Kong, for his patience and assistance in helping me find my way through some of the media archives. I would like to thank the French Center for Research on Contemporary China (CEFC) for generously providing me with office space, and giving me the sense of feeling part of an academic community, while in Hong Kong. I am indebted to Jean-Philippe Béjà, Daniel A. Bell, Yongshun Cai, Nanlai Cao, Kim Kwong Chan, Feng Chen, Victor C. Falkenheim, Bernie Frolic, Mary Gallagher, William J. Hurst, Li Lianjiang, Edward Schatz, Narendra Subramanian, Carsten T. Vala, Yuhua Wang, Jean-Paul Wiest, Keping Wu and David Zweig for their invaluable advice on my dissertation’s research project and useful tips for fieldwork. Special thanks go to Sébastien Billioud for sharing unpublished information about his research on Confucian education, which was useful for empirical comparison. I am also grateful to Charles Burton, David Ownby and Kimberley Ens Manning for their interest in and helpful comments on an earlier (or preliminary) draft of my dissertation. Many people in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto made my experience as a PhD student, an exciting and an intellectually stimulating one. Many thanks to Kimberley Carter, Kristin Cavoukian, Cindy Chung, Sarah Eaton, Asya El- Meehy, Nikole Herriott, Kenneth Huynh, Kate Korycki, Alanna Krolikowski, Faith Pang, Mark Purdon, Debra Thompson, Arjun Tremblay, Clifton Vander Linden, Jenn Walner, and Xunming Wang for their friendship and support at various moments of my early years of the PhD program, and for our inspiring conversations. There are people who made my life the most fulfilling throughout my writing, and these are the ones who took my mind off research after my long days of work in Montreal and elsewhere. My brother, Marcel-Édouard Reny, and my closest friends, whom I have known for over ten, if not twenty years - Judith Antoine-Bertrand, Annie Billington, Emilie Brown, Sylvie Charbonneau, Laure Corten, Sohini Guha, Chloé Latulippe, Françoise Montambeault, Eugénie Panitcherska, Dorothée Roy, Donald Walker - have been the greatest source of joy and support. I am grateful to Donald and Emilie for having read and revised the manuscript carefully prior to its submission. Françoise and Sohini, who are also political scientists, have been role models in all respects for me. Special thanks to Françoise for always making sure that I never miss fellowship application deadlines! I am profoundly indebted to Jean-François Huchet, for his help, friendship, curiosity and interest in what I did, and for his critical mind. Huhua Cao, has also been a faithful friend, if not an ‘uncle’