Capitalist Candidates in Local Elections

Abstract

Elections may not have anything to do with democracy, but all democracies hold elections. In other words, elections are a necessary but not a sufficient condition for democracy. Therefore, although elections may not automatically transform an authoritarian regime into a democracy, elections may enhance the chance of such transformation. This explains why so many Western organizations including the Carter Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the International Republican Institute, and the EU have been so enthusiastic about sponsoring academic and administrative projects on local elections in China.¹ The implementation of The Law of Organizing Village Committees² (trial version) starting in 1988 seems to indicate that China’s huge authoritarian iceberg is finally starting to thaw from the bottom. Clearly, it is the Western organizations’ hope that once the process is in motion, it will gradually move up to the top. We must keep in mind, however, that it is the Chinese Communist Party who made local elections a national policy by drafting the legislation and implementing the process, although residents in a few villages acted on their own initiative in the early stages.