ABSTRACT
The consensus rule works much better for some issues, places, and political climates than for others. Consensus management is based in norms of low-conflict politics and low-level power brokerage. It is related to China's old traditional authority. It assumes that legitimated members of bureaucratic councils can easily agree on the basis of the leaders' backgrounds. In China under Mao, veteran revolutionaries were long assumed competent to judge all issue areas. As that generation dies and China diversifies, this habit is going out of style.
