Implications of the 16th Party Congress for the Institutionalization of the CCP

Implications of the 16th Party Congress for the Institutionalization of the CCP

After the Tiananmen crisis in June, 1989, many China specialists and democracy theorists - I among them - expected the communist regime to evolve quickly in a more democratic direction. Instead, the authoritarian party-state has re_consolidated itself. According to Western political science. authoritarian regimes are inherently fragile because of weak legitimacy, over-reliance on coercion. over- centralization of decision-making. and the predominance of personal power over institutional norms. This authoritarian regime, however, has proven resilient. One important reason for this has been its ability to regularize and institutionalize the succession process. Succession is one of the hardest challenges for any authoritarian regime.