Origins of Informal Coercion in China

• Author: Xi Chen
• DOI: 10.1177/0032329216681489
• Published date: 01 March 2017
• Date: 01 March 2017
• Subject Matter: Articles

Politics & Society

2017, Vol. 45(1) 67 –89

© 2017 SAGE Publications

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DOI: 10.1177/0032329216681489

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Article

Origins of Informal

Coercion in China

Xi Chen

Chinese University of Hong Kong

Abstract

Informal coercive tactics play an important role in maintaining political and social

order in authoritarian regimes today, a fact variously attributed to the state’s

incapacity to monopolize coercive force and to the strategic concealment of

repression from international society. Studying the coercive tactics used by the

Chinese government, this article directs attention to how state institutions and

strategies create incentives for state agents to delegate coercion to third parties.

In particular, this article recognizes the importance of Chinese leaders’ traditional

preference to rely on third parties rather than formal state force for social control,

and also the impressive improvements in the institutionalization of state coercion

after the start of extensive legal reforms in the late 1970s. More important, however,

is the multilayered and decentralized state structure that creates tight constraints

on local officials and therefore motivates them to use informal coercion. The state

structure in China is conducive to informal coercion in two ways. First, when local

officials pursue local or private interests that diverge from central interests, informal

coercion helps them overcome procedural barriers and avoid scrutiny from above.

Second, although central and other upper authorities tend to restrict local officials’

use of force, they often exert considerable pressure on local authorities to fulfill

various tasks that require strong coercion. Such conflicting or unfunded mandates

have frequently prompted the use of informal coercive tactics. This study highlights

the difficulty of holding local government officials accountable with formal institutions

in China.

Keywords

authoritarian regimes, informal coercion, formal institutions, political accountability,

popular resistance, social control, Chinese politics

Corresponding Author:

Xi Chen, Department of Government and Public Administration, Chinese University of Hong Kong,

United College, 318 T.C. Cheng Building, Shatin, New Territories, Hong Kong.

Email: xichen48@cuhk.edu.hk

681489PASXXX10.1177/0032329216681489Politics & SocietyChen

research-article2017

68 Politics & Society 45(1)

In contemporary authoritarian regimes social order is often maintained through infor-

mal coercion: coercion not by formal state agents, but by nonstate or semiofficial

actors such as vigilantes, thugs, or paramilitary forces.1 Indeed, informal coercion is

believed to be “critical to the survival of post–Cold War autocracies.”2 Why do state

agents want to delegate coercion to nonstate or semiofficial actors? Given their ille-

gitimacy and often outright illegality, why have informal coercive tactics often played

such an important role in a variety of democratic and nondemocratic settings?

Existing scholarship offers two different explanations. The first attributes informal

coercion to the state’s inability to prevent coercion exerted by nonstate actors. This

argument assumes that the intention to monopolize coercive power and reduce infor-

mal coercion is inherent to modern statehood, and that some states simply fail to do so

because they lack fiscal or military capacity.3 In such circumstances, private predatory

units arise, and the line between public and private violence disappears.4 This explana-

tion is consistent with studies of organized crime in societies such as Russia, Japan,

and Italy’s Sicily that attribute nonstate actors’ role in protection and enforcement

business to weak state institutions.5

An alternative explanation maintains that informal coercion is often strategically

produced by state authorities. From the point of view of authoritarian leaders, informal

coercion offers a significant advantage—the relative invisibility of state agents—

which can be particularly appealing when such rulers are faced with strong interna-

tional pressure to adhere to global norms. Scholars in this vein argue that an increase

in donor-induced democratization is an important driver of the recent trend toward the

privatization of state violence.6 In such countries, formally imposing martial law or

banning opposition activity incurs prohibitively high costs, rendering preferable vio-

lence that is orchestrated by the state but carried out by nonstate actors. Because thug

groups are not formally linked to state security forces, they provide a “certain invisi-

bility as far as international opinion is concerned.”7

Little attention has been paid to the internal constraints on state agents that create

incentives to delegate coercion to third parties. Informal coercive tactics are often used

not because state officials seek to avoid international sanctions or lack the capacity to

contain nonstate or quasi-state actors, but because formal coercion is tightly con-

strained by the regime’s own legal and political institutions, rendering it less effective

or undesirable. Indeed, the relative invisibility of state agents in informal coercion

allows state leaders not only to cope with international pressure but also to overcome

domestic procedural barriers and skirt responsibility for negative consequences.

An attempt to explain the internal dynamics—as opposed to external dynamics—

faces distinctive challenges. When state agents deploy informal coercion to avoid

international sanctions, such actions are usually conceptualized as strategic actions

taken by unitary state actors. To account for the internal dynamics, by contrast, the

state can no longer be conceptualized as a monolithic actor capable of making coher-

ent strategies. As Migdal has pointed out, we need to break down the undifferentiated

concepts of the state to understand how different elements of state apparatus pull in

different directions, leading to unanticipated patterns of behavior.8