Unlawful Bargaining : Negotiating Distribution in China

The article explores how citizens may bargain for distribution in strong authoritarian regimes. Combining in-depth case study and the survey experiment approach, it finds that regimes’ pursuit of certain political priorities may enable unlawful bargaining, an increasingly popular form of distribution bargaining that allows citizens to take hostage of state goals and name their own prices for cooperation in the absence of accountability institutions such as electoral competition. Unlike conventional participation and collective action in strong authoritarian regimes, citizens engaging in unlawful bargaining rely not on state-sanctioned rightful causes, using boundary-spanning tactics, and seeking approval from the public or higher authorities, as previous studies suggest. Rather, they may make non-rightful claims, employ law-breaching tactics, and avoid attention from the public or upper levels of the government. While very much like citizens in “everyday resistance” who pursue private gains without resorting to open deviance, those resorting to unlawful bargaining bargain more aggressively with tactics not constrained by social norms and for more substantial gains beyond subsistence. Moreover, instead of fighting the state as a monolith and resist local authorities, successful unlawful bargaining depends on the tacit understanding between citizens and local authorities to trade subordination for extra gains while keeping the central government in dark. In this way, unlawful bargaining, while helps preserve short-term stability, but erodes state hegemony and regime legitimacy