Contentious politics and political stability in contemporary China: an institutionalist explanation

The Communist regime in China survived the collapse of the Soviet Communist Bloc in the early 1990s. Since then, China has sustained rapid economic growth with an annual growth rate of 8%. However, in recent years, we have witnessed increasing social protests in Chinese cities and rural areas. The increasing contentious politics and a stable authoritarian regime puzzles theorists on authoritarian regime and political transition. This dissertation seeks to answer the question, why or how China's authoritarian regime has remained politically stable with increasing social protest. It adopts an institutionalist approach to explore the interaction between contentious politics and political institutional arrangements. It argues that the multilevel reasonability structure is the key to understanding political stability in China. This structure not only can absorb exogenous shock, but also can prevent endogenous subversion and can avoid power disequilibrium.