The Debate on Party Legitimacy in China: a mixed quantitative/qualitative analysis

Abstract

We report results here from a mixed quantitative–qualitative analysis of 168 articles published in China on the question of regime and party legitimacy. We find that ideology remains a leading strategy of future legitimation for the CCP, alongside better known strategies of institution-building and social justice. We also find that liberalism, while less often proposed, remains a potent critique of regime legitimacy. We use these results to make predictions about the evolutionary path of institutional change of China's political system, linking up Chinese elite debate with the wider scholarly debate of authoritarian durability.