Catherine Owen

This paper examines Shanghai's grassroots COVID-19 management as a lens to explore the role of local Chinese Communist Party (CCP) organisations in public policy implementation in China. We bring together literature on the Party-state relationship with literature on 'routine' and 'mobilizational' governance to construct a framework that conceptualises the CCP as the central actor in implementing public policy through campaigns. We distinguish 9 governance techniques deployed by the CCP in grassroots COVID management, which we illustrate with evidence from 37 semi-structured interviews conducted in summer 2021 with secretaries and directors from local Residents' Committees, government officials mobilised to assist with pandemic management, representatives from property management companies and Party-Mass Service Centres, as well as volunteers and residents. We demonstrate that, although Party-led policy implementation elicits comprehensive compliance, it places significant pressure on the system of grassroots governance.

This article provides a qualitative examination of two cases of
Participatory Budgeting (PB) in Shanghai – a long-running PB initiative
in Minhang District, organised in cooperation with the
District People’s Congress, and a one-off project in Yangjing Subdistrict,
Pudong, in 2017, jointly organised by a community foundation
and residents’ committee. The article seeks to interrogate
the relationship between the Party, state and society at the submunicipal
level through one ‘state-facing’ PB initiative and one
‘society-facing’ PB initiative. We reveal how PB is deeply
embedded in Party structures and networks, formally in the case
of Minhang and informally in the case of Yangjing. Our research
contributes to three debates on participatory governance in
urban China. Firstly, contrary to the existing literature, PB neither
primarily ‘emancipates’ citizens nor off-loads budgetary decisions
onto them; instead, PB contributes towards party-building and
citizens’ orderly participation, thereby strengthening overall Party
leadership. Secondly, we challenge the widely-used term ‘partystate’,
instead separating out these three entities and showing
how they serve distinct roles in grassroots governance innovations
such as PB. Thirdly, we show how participatory mechanisms
developed in one political and cultural context can have vastly
differing effects when employed in another.

This article interrogates the operating logic of China's street-level regulatory state, demonstrating that residents' committees (RCs) assume a role as regulatory intermediaries to enhance the efficiency of local governance. Using Shanghai's new recycling regulations as a case study, it explores the mechanisms by which RCs elicit not only citizens' compliance but also active participation. We show that the central mechanisms derive from the RCs' skilful mobilization of particular social forces, namely mianzi and guanxi, which are produced within close-knit social networks inside Shanghai's housing estates (xiaoqu). We advance three arguments in the study of China's emerging regulatory state. First, we show how informal social forces are employed in regulatory governance at the street level, combining authoritarian control with grassroots participation. Second, the focus on RCs as regulatory intermediaries reveals the important role played by these street-level administrative units in policy implementation. Third, we suggest that the RCs' harnessing of informal social forces is essential not only for successful policy implementation at street level but also for the production of the local state's political legitimacy.

This article explores the new political subjectivities that are emerging in disadvantaged communities in Kyrgyzstan following post-Soviet state transformation and retreat. It explores the ways in which the collapse of the Soviet-era bureaucracy and emergence of a marketizing yet rent-seeking state bureaucracy has facilitated the emergence of 'active citizens' in self-built shanty towns in two locations in Kyrgyzstan-the capital, Bishkek, and the Issyk Kul resort region in the east. Based on participant observation and research interviews with members of so-called 'self-help groups' in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan, in which residents co-organise to lobby local government for basic amenities and pool funds to raise money for community infrastructure and services in the absence of a functioning state, the chapter makes two contributions to understanding the nature of citizenship in the context of weak, post-Soviet states. First, it suggests that, rather than seeing self-organised citizens as a threat to stability-a perspective common to non-liberal governments-these initiatives are supported and encouraged by the Kyrgyz authorities, since they perform tasks and provide services in lieu of the weak state. Autonomous citizens who can take responsibility for their own welfare are useful when the state cannot provide adequate services. Hence, leaders of weak states are able to recontextualise global neoliberal discourses of active citizenship, which emphasise autonomous, rational citizens, in order to legitimise their functional inabilities. Second, it seeks to problematise the binary distinction between the 'passive Soviet citizen' and the modern, post-Soviet active citizen, evident in government and international NGO discourses, and suggests that that the idea of the 'passive Soviet citizen' is a discursive trope utilised to distinguish desirable from undesirable subjectivity in the post-Soviet market state.

This article explores the way in which Russian and Chinese governments have rearticulated global trends towards active citizenship and participatory governance, and integrated them into pre-existing illiberal political traditions. The concept of 'participatory authoritarianism' is proposed in order to capture the resulting practices of local governance that, on the one hand enable citizens to engage directly with local officials in the policy process, but limit, direct and control civic participation on the other. The article explores the emergence of discourses of active citizenship at the national level and the accompanying legislative development of government-organised participatory mechanisms, demonstrating how the twin logics of openness and control, pluralism and monism, are built into their rationale and implementation. It argues that as state bureaucracies have integrated into international financial markets, so new participatory mechanisms have become more important for local governance as government agencies have lost the monopoly of information for effective policy-making. Practices of participatory authoritarianism enable governments to implement public sector reform while directing increased civic agency into non-threatening channels.

This essay is a critical reflection on the challenge to academic freedom presented by the globalisation of practices of knowledge production. It explores a tension within the logic of the internationalisation agenda: UK universities are premised upon forms of knowledge production whose roots lie in European Enlightenment values of rationalism, empiricism and universalism, yet partnerships are growing with universities premised on rather different, non-liberal and, perhaps, incommensurable values. Therefore, in advancing the internationalisation agenda in non-liberal environments, UK-based scholars find themselves caught between a rock and a hard place: either legitimising and sustaining the subjection of knowledge production to the state on one hand, or engaging in a form of epistemological colonialism by demanding adherence to ‘our values’ on the other. Using Chinese research culture as an illustration, the article contributes to ongoing debate on the ethics of social science research collaboration with universities based in contrasting epistemological cultures.

Abstract: This article combines historical analysis with ethnographically informed fieldwork in order to explore the historical roots of contemporary Sinophobia in Central Asia. It shows that Sinophobia is spread discursively through conspiracy theories in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, which suggest that China is planning to ‘take over’ in Central Asia, and have their basis in the territorial acquisitions made by China in the immediate post-Soviet period. However, a diachronic view of relations between China and the Central Asian region demonstrates that these acquisitions were part of an attempt to resolve colonial disputes dating back to the late 19th Century and involved significantly reduced territorial claims on the part of China. Fears of contemporary Chinese territorial expansion are therefore greatly exaggerated. The article concludes by endorsing a pro-active stance on tackling Sinophobia in Central Asia, both for domestic governments and for China.

This article examines the emergence of the concept obshchestvennyi kontrol’ in state discourse, the practices to which it has been attached and the legitimating narrative employed to justify them. It traces the concept of kontrol’ from Leninist conceptions of rabochyi kontrol’, through post-Stalinist discourses of narodnyi kontrol’, demonstrating that contemporary state-driven articulations of obshchestvennyi kontrol’ exhibit a substantial amount of continuity in the conceptualisation of the role of the citizen as assisting the state in its pre-determined goals. However, in contrast to rabochyi and narodnyi kontrol’, which were legitimated by various aspects of Marxist-Leninist theory, contemporary mechanisms of obshchestvennyi kontrol’ are accompanied by a rhetoric of increasing international competitiveness, thereby allowing the Kremlin to respond to international norms of a ‘small state’, outsourcing and civic participation.

This paper explores contrasting conceptions of the essentially contested concept obshchestvennyi kontrol’, as understood by the anti-systemic opposition and the Kremlin. It shows that the period of contention accompanying the 2011-2012 elections allowed competing narratives of this concept to emerge. First, the opposition presented it as a means for citizens to hold corrupt authorities accountable to the law; second, the Kremlin promoted it in order to enhance government efficiency. The article shows that the Kremlin has co-opted the counter-hegemonic discourse into a new law which delimits the possibilities for enacting this concept in a fashion that recalls Soviet governance practices.

This article explores contentious politics within institutions that are neither state bodies nor “civil society” organisations in contemporary Russia. It shows that human rights activists join Public Monitoring Commissions, created by the state to oversee conditions in prisons, to prevent these bodies from “white-washing” the Federal Penitentiary Service and in some cases have effected small but noteworthy improvements inside the prisons under their jurisdiction. Their contentious claims are grounded in the government’s own legislation and made from a platform that is formally endorsed by the state and are therefore more difficult for the authorities to ignore.

This briefing note shows how Russian foreign policy in Africa facilitates illicit financial flows (IFF) into and out of the continent through two case studies. First, in Sudan, gold-mining ventures, supported by military investments, are being exploited by Russian and Sudanese political elites hit by Western economic sanctions. Second, in Madagascar, Russian ‘political technologists’ influenced electoral processes by cultivating anti-Western sentiments and supporting Moscow-friendly candidates. Together, these case studies exemplify the range of tools – in the political, media, and military realms – employed by Kremlin-connected actors to advance Russia’s international economic interests by informal means.
Russia’s stated political ambitions in Africa seek to build what it considers ‘an independent centre of power in a multipolar world’.4 A further ambition is to create economic environments amenable to illicit Russian trade and finance. Illicit financial flows between Russia and countries across Africa are extremely difficult to trace – and have become even more difficult with the closure of the independent Russian media following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022.

This paper categorises the practices used by Russian Kremlin-connected actors to advance Russian illicit financial flows (IFF) and depicts them, as well as their relationships to one another and to IFF in a novel framework. It argues that conclusively identifying and tracing IFF in authoritarian environments is very difficult due to the politicised nature of authoritarian legal systems and the inevitable data gaps. Our framework seeks to remedy these challenges by mapping malign practices, enacted by Russian actors in collaboration with elite overseas partners to create conditions friendly to Russian IFF, across three vectors: 1) political activities, which blur formal and informal means of diplomacy and political influencing to promote Russia-friendly candidates and political parties; 2) media activities, which blur truth and falsehood by constructing and disseminating narratives painting Russia and pro-Russia actors in a positive light; and 3) political violence, which blurs legitimate and illegitimate use of force to secure investment projects, destabilise regions and undermine or eliminate opposition. We argue that the deployment of these practices is deeply connected to Russian foreign policy objectives, which are built in part on informal and patronal relationships with domestic elites. Thus, the principal actors in Russian foreign policy-making and -doing are not state institutions but elites, intermediaries, private companies, and organised crime groups.

This contribution considers ‘illiberal peace’ in post-colonial Eurasia in the aftermath of the Soviet Union and in the shadow of Russia and China as ‘emerging powers’. Authoritarian modes of conflict management – which have economic, spatial and discursive aspects – are oriented towards regime consolidation and the creation of a particular type of political economy. We should understand these as a form of authoritarian interventionism which had three main goals in this context: (1) to end violence conflict by preventing rebels from influencing public discourse; (2) to control the resources; and (3) to shape the political space. Despite the fact that liberal actors do illiberal things, and vice versa, this contribution argues that in order for this complexity to make political sense the distinction between liberal and illiberal should be maintained. Furthermore, in order for these illiberal practices to make historical sense we must situate them in their regional, colonial and post-colonial contexts.