Constructive noncompliance

Comparative Politics

Volumn 47, Issue 3, 2015, Pages 253-279

  Tsai, Lily L ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 84989285171     PISSN: 00104159     EISSN: 21516227     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5129/001041515814709329     Document Type: Article

References (96)

1. For an overview of this vast literature, see Tom R. Tyler, "Psychological Perspectives on Legitimacy and Legitimation," Annual Review of Psychology, 57 (January 2006), 375-400
2. Tom R. Tyler, Why People Obey the Law (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 19-39
3. V Lee Hamilton and Herbert Kelman, Crimes of Obedience: Toward a Social Psychology of Authority and Responsibility (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990)
4. Ian Hurd, "Legitimacy and Authority in International Politics," International Organization, 53 (March 1999), 379-408
5. Margaret Levi, Of Rule and Revenue (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989)
6. Margaret Levi, Audrey Sacks, and Tom Tyler, "Conceptualizing Legitimacy, Measuring Legitimating Beliefs," American Behavioral Scientist, 53 (November 2009), 354-75, especially 354, 361-62.
7. Weber, of course, famously noted that belief in the legitimacy of an authority is an important source of compliance or "domination," the "probability that certain specific commands (or all commands) will be obeyed by a given group of persons." Max Weber, Economy and Society, Vol. 1 (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1978), 212-16.
8. Robert Alan Dahl and Charles Edward Lindblom, Politics, Economics, and Welfare (New Brunswick: Transaction Pub, 1953), 115.
9. Camilo Garcia-Jimeno, The Political Economy of Moral Conflict: An Empirical Study of Learning and Law Enforcement under Prohibition (PhD dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2012), 30-36.
10. See, for example, Kellen Russoniello, "The Devil (and Drugs) in the Details: Portugal's Focus on Public Health as a Model for Decriminalization of Drugs in Mexico," Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law, and Ethics, 12 (April 2012), 384
11. "Brixton Lights Up: The First Step to Decriminalizing Drugs," The Economist, July 5, 2001.
12. Robert A. Kagan, "Editor's Introduction: Understanding Regulatory Enforcement," Law & Policy, 11 (April 2008), 104-05.
13. Tupak Huehuecoyotl, "Arizona Educators Compact of Non-Compliance," February 23, 2011, accessed April 28, 2014, https://wwwfacebook.com/note.php?note-id510150150315541063&id5100000041175116.
14. Lisa Wedeen, Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).
15. For experimental evidence consistent with Levi's work, see Eric Dickson, Sanford C. Gordon, and Gregory A. Huber, "Enforcement and Compliance in an Uncertain World: An Experimental Investigation," The Journal of Politics, 71 (October 2009), 1357-78.
16. Michael X. Delli Carpini, Fay Lomax Cook, and Lawrence R. Jacobs, "Public Deliberation, Discursive Participation, and Citizen Engagement: A Review of the Empirical Literature," Annual Review of Political Science, 7 (January 2004), 315-44
17. Simone Chambers, Reasonable Democracy: Jiirgen Habermas and the Politics of Discourse, Vol. 11 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996)
18. Amy Gutmann and Dennis Frank Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996)
19. James L. Gibson, "Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation: Judging the Fairness of Amnesty in South Africa," American Journal of Political Science (July 2002), 540-56
20. Ian Ayres and John Braithwaite, Responsive Regulation: Transcending the Deregulation Debate (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992
21. Stephen J. Famsworth, "Congress And Citizen Discontent Public Evaluations of the Membership and One's Own Representative," American Politics Research, 31 (January 2003), 66-80
22. Trace S. Kershaw and Sheldon Alexander, "Procedural Fairness, Blame Attributions, and Presidential Leadership," Social Justice Research, 16 (February 2003), 79-93
23. Stephan Landsman, "Commentary: Dispatches from the Front: Lay participation in Legal Processes and the Development of Democracy," Law & Policy, 25 (April 2003), 173-78.
24. John R. Hibbing and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse, Stealth Democracy: Americans' Beliefs about How Government Should Work (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
25. Allan E. Lind and Tom R. Tyler, The Social Psychology of Procedural Justice (New York: Springer, 1988
26. Tom R. Tyler, "Psychological Models of the Justice Motive: Antecedents of Distributive and Procedural Justice," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67 (November 1994), 850
27. Tom R. Tyler, "Public Trust and Confidence in Legal Authorities: What do Majority and Minority Group Members Want from the Law and Legal Institutions?" Behavioral Sciences & the Law, 19 (April 2001), 215-35
28. Tom Tyler, Cooperation in Groups: Procedural Justice, Social Identity, and Behavioral Engagement (Philadelphia: Psychology Press, 2000).
29. For empirical studies, see Forrest D. Colburn, ed., Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New York: ME Sharpe Inc, 1989).
30. Gene Sharp and Joshua Paulson, Waging Nonviolent Struggle: 20th Century Practice and 21st Century Potential (Manchester: Extending Horizons Books, 2005
31. Carl Cohen, Civil Disobedience: Conscience, Tactics, and the Law, Vol. 117 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), 39
32. Sir Adam Roberts and Timothy Garton Ash, eds., Civil Resistance and Power Politics: The Experience of Non-violent Action from Gandhi to the Present (Oxford: OUP Oxford, 2009).
33. Forrest D. Colburn, Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New York: ME Sharpe, 1989), xii; Tyler, 2006, 375-400; Levi, Sacks and Tyler, 354-75; Levi, 70. There is of course also a large and related body of literature that reverses the direction of causality arguing that low levels of legitimacy and trust in government lead to higher levels of protest, violent collective action, and "antisystem behavior." A foundational work in this area is Easton's work on specific and diffuse support
34. David Easton, "A Re-assessment of the Concept of Political Support," British Journal of Political Science, 5 (October 1975), 435-57
35. Also Jeffrey M. Paige, "Political Orientation and Riot Participation," American Sociological Review (October 1971), 810-20
36. Douglas C. Nilson and Linda Burzotta Nilson, "Trust in Elites and Protest Orientation: An Integrative Approach," Political Behavior, 4 (November 1980), 385-404
37. Seligson A. Mitchell, "Trust, Efficacy and Modes of Political Participation: A Study of Costa Rican Farmers," British Journal of Political Science (January 1980
38. Edward N. Muller, Edward N, Thomas O. Jukam, and Mitchell A. Seligson, "Diffuse Political Support and Antisystem Political Behavior: A Comparative Analysis," American Journal of Political Science (May 1982), 240-64.
39. Levi, 146-74; James C. Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), 114-56.
40. James L. Gibson, Overcoming Apartheid: Can Truth Reconcile a Divided Nation? (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2004), 289.
41. Sidney Verba, Kay Lehman Schlozman, and Henry E. Brady, Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), 38.
42. James C. Scott, "Everyday Forms of Resistance," The Copenhagen Journal of Asian Studies, 4 (May 2008), 33.
43. Gandhi's movement of "passive resistance" famously aimed to destroy British authority in India, while Thoreau's challenge to the regime as a whole is clear in his essay "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience," where he states, "I cannot for an instant recognize that political organization as my government which is the slaves' government also⋯ I quietly declare war with the State, after my fashion, though I will still make what use and get what advantage of her I can, as is usual in such cases." Henry David Thoreau, "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience," in Hugo Adam Bedau, ed., Civil Disobedience: Theory and Practice (San Jose: Pegasus, 1969), 30, 43. For a collection of empirical case studies of nonviolent, regime-challenging resistance, see Sharp and Paulson, 2005.
44. Michael Walzer, Obligations: Essays on Disobedience, War, and Citizenship (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970) and Cohen, for example, explicitly argue that civil disobedience is not revolutionary or regime-challenging, thereby excluding Gandhi and Thoreau. Others, such as Roberts and Ash (2009), categorize the nonviolent, regime-challenging resistance of these figures as civil resistance. Normative theorists have been primarily concerned with the conditions under which law-breaking might be morally justified
45. See John Rawls, "The Justification of Civil Disobedience," in Hugo Adam Bedau, ed., Civil Disobedience: Theory and Practice (San Jose: Pegasus, 1969), 240. On debates over conceptualization, see Bedau, 15-18; Walzer, vii, 323; and Cohen, 92-128.
46. For a range of definitions, see Kimberly Brownlee, "Civil Disobedience," in Edward N. Zalta, ed., Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Stanford: Stanford University 2007).
47. Kevin J. O'Brien, "Rightful Resistance," World Politics, 49 (October 1996), 32-33.
48. Lianjiang Li and Kevin O'Brien, "Villagers and Popular Resistance in Contemporary China," Modern China, 22 (January 1996), 28-61
49. Lianjiang Li and Kevin O'Brien, "The Politics of Lodging Complaints in Rural China," The China Quarterly, 143 (September 1995), 756-83.
50. John H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America 1492-1830 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 131-32
51. Colin MacLachlan, Spain's Empire in the New World: The Role of Ideas in Institutional and Social Change (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 22.
52. Arendt, for example, notes, "There are few who would not agree with Senator Philip A. Hart's position: 'Any tolerance that I might feel toward the disobeyer is dependent on his willingness to accept whatever punishment the law might impose.'" Hannah Arendt, Crises of the Republic: Lying in Politics; Civil Disobedience; On Violence; Thoughts on Politics and Revolution, Vol. 219 (Boston, Mariner Books, 1972), 52
53. National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, and James Reston, To Establish Justice, to Insure Domestic Tranquility: The Final Report of the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence (New York: Bantam Books, 1970), 108.
54. Steven Levitsky and Maria Victoria Murillo, "Variation in Institutional Strength," Annual Review of Political Science, 12 (June 2009), 115-33
55. Hongbin Cai, and Daniel Treisman, "Did Government Decentralization Cause China's Economic Miracle?" World Politics, 58 (July 2006), 505-35
56. Harry Harding, Organizing China: the Problem of Bureaucracy, 1949-1976 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1981), 350-51
57. Mala Htun, Sex and the State: Abortion, Divorce, and the Family under Latin American Dictatorships and Democracies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
58. Sebastian Heilmann, "Policy Experimentation in China's Economic Rise," Studies in Comparative International Development, 43 (March 2008), 11.
59. Lianjiang Li, "Political Trust in Rural China," Modern China, 30 (April 2004), 250
60. Kevin O'Brien and Lianjiang Li, "Popular Contention and Its Impact on Rural China," Comparative Political Studies, 3 (April 2005), 248
61. Lianjiang Li, "Political Trust and Petitioning in the Chinese Countryside," Comparative Politics, 40 (January 2008), 217-18
62. Ethan Michelson, "Justice from Above or Below? Popular Strategies for Resolving Grievances in Rural China," The China Quarterly (March 2008), 57
63. John James Kennedy also discusses the noncompliance that results from poor enforcement of laws in John James Kennedy, "Supply and Support for Grassroots Political Reform in Rural China," Journal of Chinese Political Science, 15 (February 2010), 174.
64. Due to space constraints, the Appendix is not in the print version of this article. It can be viewed in the online version, at www.ingentaconnect.com/cuny/cp.
65. Interview, Mr. Zheng, Willow Vale Village, Beijing, June 8, 2009.
66. Interview, Mrs. Guo, Broken Fence Village, Fujian, June 22, 2009.
67. Interview, Mr. Zheng, Willow Vale Village, Beijing, June 8, 2009.
68. Interview, Mr. Hu, Broken Fence Village, Fujian, June 26, 2009.
69. Interview, Mr. Chen, Li Family Forest, Shaanxi, July 23, 2010.
70. Interview, Mrs. Liang, Broken Fence Village, Fujian, June 23, 2009.
71. Interview, Mr. Gao, Broken Fence Village, Fujian, June 23, 2009.
72. Interview, Mr. Shang, Li Family Forest, Shaanxi, July 22, 2010.
73. Interview, Grandfather Zhu, Broken Fence Village, Fujian, June 21, 2009.
74. Interview, Mr. He, Broken Fence Village, Fujian, June 26, 2009.
75. Lianjiang Li, "Political Trust in Rural China," Modern China, 30 (April 2004), 229.
76. Interview, Mr. Sun, Broken Fence Village, Fujian, June 21, 2009.
77. Interview, Mrs. Xu, Broken Fence Village, Fujian, June 21, 2009.
78. Interview, Mr. Liang, Broken Fence Village, Fujian, June 26, 2009.
79. Interview, Mr. Lin, Broken Fence Village, Fujian, June 22, 2009.
80. Interview, Mrs. Guo, Broken Fence Village, Fujian, June 22, 2009.
81. Previously, rural residents had been required by the central government to pay taxes on agricultural production and subject to local government levies. Local governments are no longer supposed to collect surtaxes and fees, but can collect small apportionments or contributions for local public projects if these projects are approved through a town meeting with villagers. James Kung, Yongshun Cai, and Xiulin Sun, "Rural Cadres and Governance in China: Incentive, Institution and Accountability," The China Journal (July 2009), 10.
82. In China villages are formally considered to be "self-governing organizations" run popularly by villagers, while townships are formally considered the lowest level of government. In practice, however, village officials are typically paid through the township government's budget and are responsible for enforcing state directives and providing village-level public services. They have almost complete formal authority and discretion over issues within the village community, and villagers consider them formal agents of the state. Village officials typically work together in a single group, although they are officially divided into two formal organizations: the village Party branch and the village committee. Officials on the village committee are supposed to be elected by villagers in direct elections, whereas officials in the village Party branch are appointed by the Communist Party. Lily Tsai, Accountability without Democracy: Solidary Groups and Public Goods Provision in Rural China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
83. Kevin O'Brien and Lianjiang Li, "Selective Policy Implementation in Rural China," Comparative Politics, 31 (January 1999), 167-86.
84. For a compilation of survey questions on perceived treatment by authorities and procedural justice, see Lind and Tyler, 1988, 245-47. See also Jason Sunshine and Tom R. Tyler, "The Role of Procedural Justice and Legitimacy in Shaping Public Support for Policing," Law & Society Review, 37 (September 2003), 513-48
85. Steven L. Blader and Tom R. Tyler, "A Four-Component Model of Procedural Justice: Defining the Meaning of a 'Fair' Process," Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29 (June 2003), 757
86. Tom R. Tyler, Kenneth A. Rasinksky and Kathleen M. McGraw, "The Influence of Perceived Injustice on the Endorsement of Political Leaders," Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 15 (December 1985), 700-25
87. Political scientists have also used similar questions to measure external efficacy or the responsiveness of government authorities to citizen input and complaints. See Verba, Schlozman, and Brady, 556. Related but different measures are used in studies by Li (2003) and Kennedy (2002). In contrast to the measures employed in this paper, which ask individuals directly about their perceptions of government responsiveness, Li asks individuals about their hypothetical engagement in rightful resistance and uses the answers to infer indirectly their attitudes about government responsiveness or external efficacy. See Lianjiang Li, "The Empowering Effect of Village Elections in China," Asian Survey, 43 (July/August 2003), 655
88. Focusing on village elections, John James Kennedy "The Face of 'Grassroots Democracy' in Rural China: Real Versus Cosmetic Elections," Asian Survey, 42 (May/June 2002), 463
89. asks individuals about their "satisfaction with the village election process" in his investigation of the relationship between different election institutions and individual evaluations of village officials. Also related but somewhat more distant from this paper's direct measures of perceptions of government responsiveness are measures of trust in political institutions such as courts, legislatures, and party organizations, and measures of general political trust. For examples from the Chinese context, see Pierre Landry, "The Institutional Diffusion of Courts in China," in Tom Ginsburg and Tamir Moustafa, eds., Rule by Law: The Politics of Courts in Authoritarian Regimes (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008
90. Tianjian Shi, "Cultural Values and Political Trust: A Comparison of the People's Republic of China and Taiwan," Comparative Politics, 33 (July 2001), 401
91. Xueyi Chen and Tianjian Shi, "Media Effects on Political Confidence and Trust in the People's Republic of China in the Post-Tiananmen Period," East Asia: An International Quarterly, 19 (September 2001), 84-118.
92. Benoit Monin and Dale T. Miller, "Moral Credentials and the Expression of Prejudice," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81 (July 2001), 33.
93. Dali Yang, Calamity and Reform in China: State, Rural Society, and Institutional Change since the Great Leap Famine (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 143, 149
94. See also Susan Young, Private Business and Economic Reform in China (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 1995), 9, 10, 16
95. Kellee S. Tsai, Capitalism Without Democracy: The Private Sector in Contemporary China (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007), 9.
96. Albert O. Hirschman, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970).