Taiwan Journal of Democracy, Volume 13, No. 2: 107-129 Village Elections and Grassroots Corruption in China Andrew Wedeman Abstract After nearly a quarter century of village elections in China, many now see them as having failed to curb corruption at the grassroots level. A comparative analysis of the development of local elections in the United States and Taiwan suggests that the pathologies found in village elections in mainland China are hardly unique. On the contrary, the advent of local elections in both the United States and Taiwan often led to the emergence of machine politics and the use of the public authority obtained through the ballot box to manipulate the electoral process. In the case of mainland China, local politicians have used many of the same tools (e.g., vote buying) as machine bosses in the United States and Taiwan to suborn the electoral process. Heretofore, they have not created political machines, but nevertheless they often have used their offices for self-enrichment. Keywords: China, corruption, machine politics, Taiwan, United States, village elections. When mainland China first began to hold elections for village committees (村民委員會) and village representative assemblies (村民代表會議) in 1990-1991, some saw what they hoped would prove to be the “sprouts of democracy” in communist China.1 Even though the village committees were Andrew Wedeman is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Georgia State University in Atlanta. <
[email protected]> 1 International Republican Institute (IRI), “People’s Republic of China: Election Observation Report” (May 15-31, 1994), http://www.iri.org/news-and-resource?type=808&country=671 (accessed June 22, 2015).