Economic Reform and Political Legitimacy in Post-Mao China

Legitimacy, Samuel Huntington once observed, “is a mushy concept that political analysts do well to avoid. Yet, it is essential to understanding the problem confronting authoritarian regimes in the late twentieth century.” ¹ The collapse of Communist regimes in Eastern Europe has reinforced the notion that their inability to sustain the customary range of social and economic benefits for their citizens delegitimized their governments. ² But legitimacy is not the exclusive concern of authoritarian regimes. In the late 1970s, when stagflation seemed to have strained the capacity of many social democracies in Western Europe, many pronounced that the modern capitalist states were in a crisis of legitimacy. ³ This chapter tries to address a simple controversy: Does market reform shore up or undermine the legitimacy of the Chinese government?