By exploring the politics of hydropower, Andrew Mertha has written one of the most important works on state–society relations in contemporary China. Adopting the “fragmented authoritarianism” framework of his mentors, Kenneth Lieberthal and Michael Oksenberg, Mertha argues that pluralism and fragmentation are even more pervasive in Chinese politics today. The original fragmented authoritarian model describes a politics where actors within the regime modify or even veto each others' preferred policies. According to Mertha, this fragmentation has evolved into a politics “in which government agencies in opposition to these hydropower projects seamlessly ally themselves with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and, more important, with the third and fourth estates, the public and the press, respectively” (p. 3). Through well-researched cases of resistance movements against dam construction, he brings to life this new dynamic.
Mertha, ever mindful of China's complex political landscape, does a masterful job of laying out the entangled political institutions in which actors in the water politics game operate. Chapter 2 should serve as a model for those who aspire to write about Chinese politics, or, indeed, politics in general. All the relevant actors, their incentives as dictated by political institutions, and the relationship between various political institutions are laid out in a clear and succinct manner. From central ministries to the little-known water commissions to local electricity companies, we learn in this chapter the complex web of interests that confronts opponents of dam building. The complex interdependence in this web of interest, however, makes it possible for opponents of dam construction to draw on allies from unlikely places and frame issues in ways that move remote audiences to bring dam builders to their heels. Thus, it is no surprise that the key variables identified by Mertha to explain the success of anti-dam movements are policy entrepreneurship and issue framing.
While the cases are carefully researched, one wonders what the alliances look like in the pro-dam-building camp. Often, dam-building efforts are motivated by an alliance of private or state electricity providers and local officials, as Mertha points out. However, one wishes for more details on what motivate them, and what tools, besides state policies and state coercive power, are deployed to realize their goal of constructing dams. Are policy entrepreneurship and framing, which are important for opponents of dams, equally important for the proponents of dam construction? Or are the successes of the dam builders contingent on other factors, such as their connections to the political elite in Beijing and the unity of the local government. Although we learn a great deal about the formal political institutions in which the dam builders operate, less is known about the informal political tactics they deploy to win their battles. A more thorough account of the incentive and tactics of the dam builders would have made this work a much more complex and satisfying one.
The author makes clear that this work merely serves to generate hypotheses, but the cases are structured in a way to test hypotheses. In particular, the failure of the Pubugou anti-dam movement was blamed on the lack of policy entrepreneurship and, thus, also on the lack of coherent framing. Undoubtedly, the two crucial explanatory variables carry weight in some aspects of the cases. However, policy entrepreneurs likely pick their fights. That is, where they see no chance of succeeding due to some other factors, they are unlikely to mobilize their web of connections and resources to resist dam construction. For example, in the case of the Pubugou, elite policy entrepreneurs might have avoided the case because it was clear to them that the party secretary of Sichuan Province at the time, Zhang Xuezhong, fully supported the project. Given that he was a close ally of President Hu Jintao, they might have avoided this case and focused on a case likely to have had some success. Similar upstream variables may have influenced other policy entrepreneurs' decisions to get involved. These questions open the way for future works to test causal logic on more systematic data concerning various civil society actions across China.
In sum, China's Water Warriors is a crucial study for scholars of contemporary China and, indeed, students of contemporary authoritarianism in general. This work, along with Kevin J. O'Brien and Lianjiang Li's Rightful Resistance in Rural China (2006), have become required readings for those exploring civil society in authoritarian regimes. Faced with a repressive, yet fragmented, state apparatus, civil society actors are increasingly able to take advantage of cleavages among government agencies, laws, and regulations promulgated by some parts of the government, an increasingly market-oriented media, and international actors to resist state actions. These works open the way to a broader research agenda. As Mertha notes, the regime is divided on some issues but unified on others, which creates an asymmetric political opportunity structure for policy entrepreneurs (p. 14). On issues such as Xinjiang or Tibet, it is very risky for nonstate actors to influence policies partly because the state presents a monolithic front. Yet, there were considerably more internal debates on these issues in the 1980s than is the case today. The relatively new monism on these issues suggests that the political elite in Beijing have some ability to invest political resources to make certain issues forbidden zones for internal disagreement.
Why do the political elite do so? What actions can nonstate actors undertake to prevent or facilitate the onset of a hardened regime stance on a given issue? Answering this broader question will generate insights into the relationship between the logic of authoritarian politics and the development of civil society in authoritarian regimes.
