It’s a bit of a paradox, because public unrest is a feature of democracy, not a bug. What autocrats fail to recognize is that the appearance of a peaceful society without conflict is not the same thing as a peaceful society without conflict. Public protest and unrest is a symptom, your society telling you something is wrong, not the thing that’s wrong.
Public protest and unrest is a symptom, your society telling you something is wrong
This is something that the Chinese government actually pays very close attention to. Specific issues - food safety and pollution for example - they allow some protest so they can gauge how strong public sentiment is on the matter. Even when they arrest protest leaders, they’ll often make policy changes in the relevant areas. I’ve heard china scholars talk about how interested the chinese government is in public opinion and the roundabout ways they assess it in a system where it can’t be regularly expressed in open elections.
the appearance of a peaceful society without conflict is not the same thing as a peaceful society without conflict
For sure. I feel like as far as an authoritarian government is concerned though, they are functionally the same. Until suddenly they are not, of course. But again, the resilience of the CCP is due in part to working out what is up for public comment and what is most definitely not.
public unrest is a feature
Again, super agree. But I don’t think of public unrest as political chaos, at least not in the US context. The inability of the government to perform it’s most basic functions without brutally pointless culture wars, the myriad ways to gum up the works and prevent action, the increasing politicization of the public service, the willingness of so many to act contrary to the government’s own interests - that’s the sort of stuff I think of as All American political chaos.
It’s a bit of a paradox, because public unrest is a feature of democracy, not a bug. What autocrats fail to recognize is that the appearance of a peaceful society without conflict is not the same thing as a peaceful society without conflict. Public protest and unrest is a symptom, your society telling you something is wrong, not the thing that’s wrong.
This is something that the Chinese government actually pays very close attention to. Specific issues - food safety and pollution for example - they allow some protest so they can gauge how strong public sentiment is on the matter. Even when they arrest protest leaders, they’ll often make policy changes in the relevant areas. I’ve heard china scholars talk about how interested the chinese government is in public opinion and the roundabout ways they assess it in a system where it can’t be regularly expressed in open elections.
For sure. I feel like as far as an authoritarian government is concerned though, they are functionally the same. Until suddenly they are not, of course. But again, the resilience of the CCP is due in part to working out what is up for public comment and what is most definitely not.
Again, super agree. But I don’t think of public unrest as political chaos, at least not in the US context. The inability of the government to perform it’s most basic functions without brutally pointless culture wars, the myriad ways to gum up the works and prevent action, the increasing politicization of the public service, the willingness of so many to act contrary to the government’s own interests - that’s the sort of stuff I think of as All American political chaos.