This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Brady, A.-M. Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Mass Persuasion as a Means of Legitimation and China’s Popular Authoritarianism

University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand

States traditionally maintain power by means of either performance-based legitimacy or promulgating ideology. Mass persuasion can be used to both promote a regime’s ideology and persuade the public that it is performing the tasks of government effectively and equitably. Most states use a combination of these two approaches to maintain political stability. In China, since the violent crackdown on the 1989 protest movement, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) government has stressed an old slogan to set a new line on its format for maintaining political power: "Seize with both hands; both hands must be strong." This means that the CCP now bases its legitimacy on both economic growth and a renewed emphasis on persuasion, or what in Chinese terms is known as propaganda and thought work. The two "hands" in this slogan are strong and intertwined, as the key themes of propaganda and thought work in the current period are promoting economic growth, building market confidence, and engaging in economic thought reform. In an extraordinary process of cultural exchange, in recent years China’s propaganda system has deliberately absorbed the methodology of political public relations, mass communications, social psychology, and other modern methods of mass persuasion commonly used in Western democratic societies, adapting them to Chinese conditions and needs. China’s modern-day propaganda and thought work is now market friendly, scientific, high tech, and politics-lite. Focusing on the years from 1989 to 2007, this article uses the case of contemporary China to examine the role of mass persuasion as a force for maintaining and, in China’s case, reclaiming political legitimacy to rule and introduces a new term to understand the China model, popular authoritarianism.

Key Words: legitimation • authoritarianism • propaganda • mass persuasion

American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 53, No. 3, 434-457 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0002764209338802


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

				B. Rothstein Creating Political Legitimacy: Electoral Democracy Versus Quality of Government American Behavioral Scientist, November 1, 2009; 53(3): 311 - 330. [Abstract] [PDF]