Local policy processes in single-party authoritarian systems and the implications for theory

Do existing policy process theories, which focus on multiple actors’ roles in national policy making processes in democracies, transfer well to one-party authoritarian systems where state-society and state-business relations are very different? This paper examines the role of grassroots business associations in the local policy processes of one large single-party state, the People’s Republic of China. Based on documentary research and fieldwork in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin between 2012 and 2015, it critically compares how local authorities interact with grassroots business associations across selected policy arenas. It finds that in this one-party authoritarian context, local policy implementation becomes a policy re-making process in which central policies are reshaped through local implementation. At the local level, bureaucratic actors involve business associations as a means to improve the co-optation and their compliance with policies. In response, the business associations have adopted strategies to achieve their goals and exert influence in the local level that are different from those of their counterparts in democratic settings. Rather than lobbying to change local policies, they either use particularistic ties to local governments in order to obtain individual exemptions from policies or strive for political positions in order to exert influence on local policy re-making. The richness and variation of local policy processes in China indicates that our understanding of authoritarian policy processes needs to drill down on the local level to examine the nuance and take the unique characteristics of state-society relations in such settings into account.