Regime Responsiveness

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from the "rights delivered" by local authorities (Tang, 2016; O'Brien & Li, 2006).

Once locals do identify a divergence, they must bring the issue (i.e., their demands) to the attention of higher-level authorities. For this, a tried and true method is a protest.

Protesters typically demand the punishment of local cadres, financial compensation, and the granting of any other rights owed (O'Brien & Li, 2006; Tong & Lei, 2010).

Typical examples include rural protests over illegal land seizures and labor protests over unpaid wages. In both cases, the visible, confrontational, and disruptive nature of protests brings governance issues to higher-level authorities' attention. Protests thus enable the grassroots to directly engage elites, thereby providing a direct

communication channel from the grassroots to elites where demands (i.e., inputs) flow upwards, bypassing local authorities (O'Brien & Li, 2006; Tang, 2016; Tong & Lei, 2010; Weiss, 2015).

1.5.3 Regime Responsiveness

By enabling the upward flow of social demands, the Mass Line stimulates regime responsiveness. As mentioned, Mass Line governance's input-output function is to improve and expedite top-down regime responses to social demands originating from below. The concept of responsiveness captures the effectiveness of the regime's responses. Chen et al. (2016) define responsiveness as "the extent to which officials in the regime adhere to the demands of societal actors" (p.384) while Meng et al. (2017) define it as "the ability of citizens to influence policy, or, conversely, the adherence of policymakers to the preferences of citizens" (p.4). Both definitions are useful. The former is more usefully applied to measure responsiveness, while the latter illustrates the two-way, state-society relationship that underpins the concept.

Responsiveness requires that "[f]irst, citizens are willing and able to express their preferences through channels that reach the political leaders. Second, leaders are willing to incorporate these demands into policy. Finally, leaders can and do incorporate some of these demands into policy" (Meng et al., 2017, p.4). When citizens use online channels to communicate their demands to the Center, who subsequently takes action to meet those demands, we are witnessing regime responsiveness and, thus, inputs converting into outputs.

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The Center responds to protestors' demands through direct engagement. The higher authority directly engages discontented citizens, bypassing local authorities to resolve a given problem. Resolutions typically involve the punishment of ineffectual cadres, central policy enforcement, and financial compensation for justly aggrieved citizens (O'Brien & Li, 2006; Tang, 2016; Tong & Lei, 2010). This type of top-down

responsiveness adheres to the logic of Mass Line governance. The regime's response results from its absorption of the masses' demands, and those demands are met through top-down direct engagement (Tang, 2016). In short, the two-way direct engagement between the grassroots and political elite forges the direct link. The interactions are characterized by protests, as a source of bottom-up demand flows, stimulating top-down resolutions.

The direct link strengthens the regime's input-output capacity is the two-way

bypassing of local authorities resulting from Center-mass direct engagement. Local officials have a strong incentive to obstruct the citizen oversight process. Being accused of corruption not only complicates rent-seeking but can land one in prison.

Furthermore, the cadre evaluation system rewards local cadres for maintaining social stability, which includes minimizing "mass incidents" (i.e., protests) (Tong & Lei, 2010). These motivations create a perverse incentive structure where local cadres are willing to go to great lengths to obstruct official information dissemination and suppress protests, even if the aggrieved citizens' complaints are justified (Meng et al., 2017; O'Brien & Li, 2006).

The direct link can overcome this obstructive behavior. Despite this, the reality is that local governments are well-positioned to prevents this. If a Mass Line ideal-type were realized, the downward flow of policy information and the upward flow of "tattling"

would occur seamlessly, without obstruction. This, however, is not the case because local governments act as intermediate institutions—institutions that place layers of rules, processes, and procedures between the Center and the masses (Tang, 2016).

They are thus ideally placed to weaken the direct link. To preserve the informational asymmetries necessary for rent-seeking, local cadres will obstruct the dissemination of authoritative information originating from the Center. They also attempt to

discredit and delegitimize citizen watchdogs' accusations (O'Brien & Li, 2006). Local cadres often resort to underhanded (including violent) means to quell protests (Cai, 2008; O'Brien & Li, 2006). Thus grassroots activism is a high-risk proposition. While

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protesting is an effective strategy to bring demands to the Center by bypassing local authorities, it also risks invoking local officials' wrath who are willing to go to great lengths to obstruct the direct-link to prevent the Center for receiving the demands.

Societal change towards the Mass Line ideal-type undermines the capacity for local obstruction. As direct engagement between elites and masses becomes increasingly seamless, local authorities' positioning becomes increasingly marginalized. In the ideal-type Mass Line Center-mass relationship, local authorities would be completely marginalized and consequently unable to obstruct the Center-mass interactions.

However, the current system provides plenty of opportunities for obstruction,

resulting in significant risks for grassroots activists and a dearth of input information for the Center. These obstruction opportunities thus make protest an imperfect mechanism for direct engagement and as a source of inputs.

Besides selectively disseminating official information, another strategic aspect of regime mobilization involves the designing Mass Line institutions to foster political participation. Institutions are designed to increase the volume of social inputs and the state's capacity to absorb those inputs. These institutions forge the direct link without the need for citizens to resort to protest. A prominent example is the letters and requisitions (xinfang) system, which allow citizens to make complaints in person or by mail. The xinfang system's design enables locals to make complaints against local authorities by delivering petitions directly to higher levels forming a state-sanctioned channel for bottom-up direct engagement (Minzner, 2009; Tang, 2016).

While the xinfang system's design effectively fosters mass participation via the direct link, it has its flaws. Local officials attempt to obstruct petitioners from "going to Beijing," intercept written petitions sent by mail, and threaten locals whom they suspect may submit a petition (O'Brien & Li, 2006). Moreover, the output capacity is underdeveloped. While some petitions induce responses from elite officials, the 11.5 million petitions received per year (2002) inundated the system leading the vast majority of petitions to go unaddressed and unresolved (Minzner, 2006). However, what the xinfang system does show is that institutions designed in line with Mass Line governance ideology effectively foster mass participation without citizens having to resort to protest. In this way, the bottom-up flow of demands is "atomized" rather than

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made collectively. Here, mass participation comprises of an aggregate of atomistic demands (Distelhorst & Hou, 2017).