Xi Chen. Social protest and contentious authoritarianism in China

New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012. — xiv; 241 p.
ISBN: 978-1-107-01486-2China is an example of a rare phenomenon, which i call contentious authoritarianism, of a strong authoritarian regime having accommodated or facilitated widespread and routinized popular collective action for a relatively long period of time. of course, under certain circumstances, waves of popular contention are not unusual within authoritarian regimes. Like in a democracy, ordinary people may sometimes fid political opportunities to stage collective action in the context of authoritarianism. For example, they can do so when the capacity or propensity of the authoritarian rulers for repression has declined, or when there is signifiant division among elites. However, the window of opportunity will usually be closed in just a short period of time. this is especially true
for popular movements with political goals, which have actually brought down many authoritarian regimes in history. Few such movements lasted for a long period of time, because soon after their founding, they either succeed in changing the system or get put down. obviously, because of their political nature, they are unlikely to become regularized in a strong authoritarian regime.