Authoritarian governments face serious difficulties in dealing with popular resistance. Making concessions to popular movements may encourage further resistance, but repressing opposition damages regime legitimacy and makes popular support less likely in future uprisings (411, 414).
In general, democracies cannot use repression to the same degree as authoritarian states, since democratic figures will be held accountable during elections. Authoritarian leaders do not face this difficulty (412).Making limited concessions produces a situation where the regime's illegitimacy has been demonstrated, but that the core drivers of dissatisfaction are still unresolved. Concessions also indicate regime vulnerability to public pressure, increasing perceived incentives to continue protesting (413).
In a political system with multiple levels of governance and authority, regime resilience will be increased if responsibility for controlling popular resistant is delegated to lower levels of governance, because protestors will be unable to effectively engage central government and the top-level administration's public image will still be preserved (411, 415).
Allowing lower-level sections of government to deal with public opposition reduces blame on central government, and restricts the likelihood of significant concessions because local government powers are limited. Additionally, the failures of local government will give central government a guideline for how to approach the issues if it is not properly resolved at the lower level (415-416).
Civil resistance, termed mass incidents, have become a growing concern for the Chinese government in the decades since 1993. These movements are increasingly common and disruptive, making their prevention a top priority for the Chinese government (411-412).
In many other formerly authoritarian governments in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the rate of strikes was low until the successful completion of revolutions, afterwards the people expressed their newfound freedoms by striking and rioting. The sudden increase in Chinese strikes must have an alternative cause (412).
- The presence of popular resistance in an authoritarian system is an example of state failure, since the authoritarian state mechanisms are designed to prevent exactly that kind of popular opposition. As a result, repression is the obvious tactic to use, but this ruins necessary legitimacy and may radicalize the opposition (412-413).
- Small areas of organized resistance to regime rule can serve as testing grounds and launchpads for increasingly threatening forms of resistance. The example is given that the economic demands of Solidarity were soon blended with political demands because the government's repression of the movement was not effective enough (413-414).
Regional governments in China have a large amount of discretionary power, especially over economic affairs. China expects local governments to deal with popular opposition and holds those local governments accountable for their response. Handling these instances is an important job for top-level officials in local government, and directly tied to promotion (416).
The central government is much more concerned about regime legitimacy than local government, whose officials are incentivized mainly on their ability to enact policy. As a result, local governments are more likely to pursue actions which potentially risk legitimacy, like repression (417).Local governments face far larger costs for making concessions and fewer risks for using repression. Concessions usually come with economic or political costs that will always be disproportionately borne by the local government, which is also more likely to face the costs of continued opposition from the population and the government (418).
- Governments have four possible responses to popular resistance: concessions; concessions with discipline, meaning that demands are met, but some participants are punished; tolerance, where citizen demands are ignored but no repression occurs; and repression (417).
The central government is likely to limit its interventions in conflicts between local governments and popular opposition when the conflict becomes a matter of regime legitimacy because casualties mount, media attention builds to a significant level, or the popular resistance becomes to large to regionally isolate (419).
Invention by the central government or provincial government is high selective and features primarily a response of concessions with discipline, to act as a savior and a punisher. These interventions were primarily driven by increased media attention on the popular opposition (421).Under certain conditions when local government is clearly at fault or grossly corrupt, intervention by the central government to grant concessions and punish local officials can increase regime legitimacy (422).The lack of violence in Chinese society, which is generally seen by the population as asking to be shot, combined with strict control over news media limits the situations where provincial or central governments might intervene in popular resistance. These, combined with the small scale of most opposition, means that local governments are given significant autonomy in how to deal with popular resistance (425-426).
- The tendency of local governments to place more value on repression that concessions means that, compared to intervention by the central government, intervention by the provincial government is likely to include a stronger focus on discipline, with opposition figures being jailed alongside local officials regardless of the 'just'-ness of their resistance (425).
- Most instances of repression by local governments involve the use of agricultural land for non-agricultural purposes -- usually flaring into conflict if peasants are not adequately compensated -- or when opposition activities threaten to harm the reputation of local officials. In both cases, primary factors in repression are the personal wellbeing of local officials (427).
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