Politics of Legitimacy: State-Society Relations and Patterns of Chinese Politics

A sweeping work on China that interrogates how states gain, maintain, and lose legitimacy.

The Chinese communist state has survived massive social changes, including the introduction of capitalist markets, an ongoing explosion of technological innovation, and an unprecedented jump in wealth and education, accompanied by a major cultural transformation. How has China managed to maintain its power even as the ground has so profoundly shifted? In Politics of Legitimacy, Dingxin Zhao argues that state power can be legitimized in three ideal-typical ways: a set of values upheld by the state (ideological legitimacy), recognized political processes such as regular competitive elections (procedural legitimacy), and the state’s capacity to provide public goods (performance legitimacy).

Building on this theoretical framework, Zhao analyzes different aspects of Chinese politics, including the tragic ending of the 1989 pro-democracy movement, the weak development of mass-based nationalism in post-Mao China, the reasons behind China’s economic success, the anti-establishment tendency of the Chinese mass media and social media, and the sources of political tension in China, despite a superb economy. Moreover, Zhao’s innovative framework is widely applicable beyond China, shifting our attention from regime-type categories to the tools and relationships that determine their survival or collapse, and illuminating the current global emergence of conservatism and religious nationalism.

Dingxin Zhao is the Max Palevsky Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Chicago and director of the Center for Advanced Studies in Humanities at Zhejiang University. 

Matthew Turner and Haiying Weng are freelance translators. In addition to translating news and cultural commentary for Sixth Tone Media, they have co-translated The Logic of Chinese Behavior by Zhai Xuwei, Berlin Reflections by Yan Jun, and Facing the Era of Great Transformation by Wu Jinglian, among others.