In the first Module, I compared the international system to a board game, the billions of humans on Earth to individual players on a team, and states to teams. Further, as noted in Module II, most of our focus in International Affairs is on the patterns of interactions both within and across states. To better understand the way in which states operate, this Module will explain why states came to be organized the way they did.

To do so, let's look at what political philosophers have said centuries ago. The Social Contract (1762), Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote:

Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they. How did this change come about? I do not know. What can make it legitimate? That question I think I can answer.

Here Rousseau mirrors a question many of us ask today: How did we get the governments in place that we have today, and how is this accepted as the norm?

To get there, Rousseau backs up to the team we all started on: family. He suggests that a family "team" makes sense. After all, "the ruler corresponds to the father [it was the 18th century, so we will have to update this to be more equal], and the people to the children." He goes to explain that he reasons people are on the family team because of love. He explains that the parents show love to their children and in turn, the children repay them when they are older by taking care of them.

He argues, however, that the state is not based on love. Instead, Rousseau laments that, for the state, "the pleasure of commanding takes the place of the love which the chief cannot have for the peoples under him." Yikes.

Rousseau is a more optimistic person than other political philosophers of his time. After all, Rousseau was writing in response to an even-bleaker version of human nature and states touted by Thomas Hobbes decades early. In his work, Leviathan (published in 1651), Hobbes makes an even bleaker assessment than that the state does not love its people. Instead, Hobbes explains that in every person is a desire for power that "cannot be content ... without the acquisition of more." When this transfers to the role of governments, Hobbes argues that they are good for people because without them "the life of man [is] solitary, [poor], nasty, brutish, and short."

As for leaders, Hobbes explains leaders come about in two ways. First, they are made through force (e.g. "by being able to destroy them if they refuse") or through voluntary obedience. What is notable about this voluntary aspect is that all the people's power put together is less than the power of the leader. That is, the reason that a person is a leader is that they are the most powerful overall, even if all other's powers are combined.

Rousseau agreed with Hobbes that a state may not be adoring of its people as a parent is of a child, but domination alone was too far for Rousseau with his rose-colored glasses. Instead, Rousseau acknowledges a key element in human existence: choice. He argues that no sovereign (or even parent) is only blinded by love and no sovereign is only ruling based on complete and total domination. Instead, there is an interaction effect in which people are participating on a team out of obligation, the potential for self-gain, and at times fondness and admiration of the whole.

Rousseau explains that, as human ingenuity led to civilizations that were larger than the familial unit, so did our understanding of the need to be able to rely on others we did not love (Rousseau so eloquently describes family members as our "first expansions of the human heart"). He reasons that before, you could just act from the heart, as your judge and jury and/or army. Now, you had more people to rely on and needed language, laws, and protection both from and for one another.

He goes on to suggest that it is very difficult for a society to treat people equally and not become tyrannical and argues that there is a real threat in all governments of "despotism, gradually raising up its hideous head and devouring everything that remained sound and untainted in any part of the State, would at length trample on both the laws and the people, and establish itself on the ruins of the republic." So, he had his bleak moments too.

But he argues that this extreme inequality would end in revolution. He writes, "As he was maintained by force alone, it is force alone that overthrows him."

Instead of complete domination over ones subjects, which Rousseau predicts will end in violence and overthrow, Rousseau offers a role for the state that may be directly equal to the sum of its parts. Said differently, a state can be directly equal to the combined power of each individual within it but not an ounce more. This is quite a balancing at that requires the same power between a group of people and the state.

Rousseau explains that this if met perfectly, this balance can be seen as a well-executed social contract. On one side, people give up some of their liberties and lawlessness, and on the other side, the state has to rule based on an equality in terms of providing laws and protecting liberties. Rousseau explains that some states may actively create this contract, while others (e.g. benevolent dictators) may enact this contact, though no document was signed.

So, to return to our original question of why do people even join teams, the answer is that (1) human existence is complex enough that people find it useful to cooperate with more people than their family, and (2) this kind of cooperation requires a lot of coordination of people. People will agree to be a part of societies - to a point - so long as they provide some laws for all to follow (and apply those laws relatively equally) while still allowing people some liberties. Next, we are going to examine the different ways in which these teams can be structured.

The reason we have states, as noted above, is because human existence is complex enough that people find it useful to cooperate with more people than their family. Yet, when we start to examine the states around the world, we find that each one does things a little differently. In this section, we will examine the different ways in which teams (i.e. states) are organized and why.

To put it most simply, teams form differently based on existing inequality. Let me give a simple metaphor as an example ad then we will compare democratic and autocratic historical cases.

Consistent Characteristics of a Democracies

Are you good at trivia? I would like to think I am, but my father has a memory for the trivial. Though my strong competitive nature hates to admit it, he is better than me at trivia. Not all trivia. If it's geography, history, or rock music, I can run the board. But he has one of those mile-wide, inch-deep kind of memory banks where he holds the name of Major League Baseball relief pitchers from the 1980s and current political issues in his head with equal clarity and recall.

So, when we used to play trivia , others all too often pick him (a man who never finished college) as a teammate first. I know, yikes. This is not personal (or at least that's what I tell myself). This is due to what he had to offer the team (winners got free pizza). If my father was on a team, the other players can sit back and let him write the answers down on the little sheets of paper all night. He's happy and they are happy. There is no discussion, no potential debate or disagreements. It's easy breezy. They instill in him an authority, and he uses it to help their team win.

Meanwhile, on my team, things looked a little different. There were knitted brows, secret googling (which everyone frowns on, of course), and just a deep sense that we all should be doing better than we are. This, my friends, is democracy. It's filled with headaches and hard work. Winston Churchill described democracy as the "worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…" And he was right. Our team doesn't have one boss, but many. We discuss, debate, determine, and doubt our decisions the whole trivia night long. Sometimes we win. Most often, we do "fine."

Autocracies are states in which there is a high concentration of power in the hands of a few. This requires fewer people to run the team. In contrast, democracies need the input of many. Even if this leads to more disagreements, more time spent debating the right answers, etc. the reason is that more people are needed to achieve for the team to be successful.

In practice, autocracies may or may not be led by benevolent leaders, such as my father, willing to carry the weight for others and always thinking about the larger good (e.g. pizza). And in practice, some democratic teams may thrive on brainstorming sessions, which may lead to awesome new innovations that benefit all of humanity.

The next section will define exactly what a democracy includes, and why some "teams" in history chose to become democratic. The subsequent section will then focus on autocracies. Adopting Rousseau's social contract, democracy can be best understood as a system of government in which the contract is balanced: the state functions for the people, and in turn, the people are obliged to the state. Though there can be love between the two, this is not required. Though at times the state may call for complete dominion, this is often not tolerated by the people. It's a real give-and-take.

Specifically, all democracies contain three components within their social contract. First, they have a set of laws written down (or verbally agreed upon) that apply to all citizens, also known as a rule of law. In keeping with this is some process by which these general laws can be applied to specific cases by some adjudicating organ. Second, all democracies ascribe to finding a balance between a rule of law that brings order and stability and the protection of liberties (i.e. individual freedoms) such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness so long as it does not infringe on the next person's similar pursuits. Third, all democracies allow the state to be comprised of the people through frequent, open, and robustly competitive elections.

All of the earliest ancient civilizations (e.g. the Fertile Crescent, Ancient Egypt, the Indus Valley civilization, and early Chinese Dynasties) were all built on large populations led by an autocratic leader(s) that cultivated massive amounts of one staple crop (e.g. wheat in the Fertile Crescent and Egypt and rice in the Indus Valley and Chinese civilizations). These civilizations needed lots of fresh water (and each was nestled next to one or two large rivers).

Most fascinatingly, those early civilizations that experimented with democracy had none of these natural factors. Ancient Greece is a perfect example. The geography of Greece is one of small coastal villages and islands spread out along the Mediterranean. There is no large, flat piece of land to grow tons of one staple crop. There are also no large freshwater sources that compare to the ones that irrigated the crops for the civilizations mentioned above. Egypt had the Nile, the Fertile Crescent had the Tigris and Euphrates, the Indus Valley had the similarly-named river, and the Yellow River provided abundant fresh water to the early Chinese dynasties. Still today, these rivers are some of the longest in the world.

In contrast, the terrain in Greece is hilly and arid. There is little room to plant vast acres of one staple crop and no rivers in Greece make a top-200 list, leading to little opportunities for freshwater irrigation without intensive technological advancements. So, how did Ancient Greece survive?

Greeks saw supply and demand in the market. Though they could not grow vast amounts of staple crops, they could grow more luxurious items that could be preserved (e.g. grapes for wine and olives for oil) that could then be traded for staple items. So, the Greeks survived, and later thrived, by cultivating high-demand and high-value items and building boats to trade these goods along the Mediterranean coast.

What does this have to do with democracy? I would argue a lot. Imagine you were living in a small village along the Mediterranean coast. Your family cultivated, bottled, and sold wine, and you were able to grow a few fruit and vegetables in the garden and buy wheat at the port to make flatbread. Seriously, I kind of want that life.

That said, every now and then your village was attacked by pirates (the term piracy is from the Ancient Greek word peiráomai, or "attempt," meaning attempt to take). Though you have lost everything you need for your day-to-day (perfect) life, you do not have a means for protecting yourself from the often advanced attacks from pirates (see Sea Peoples). Over time, you also find you could use help with other things (e.g. maintaining ports, freedom of navigation of your wine-bearing trade ships, etc.).

The far-flung nature of the Greek city-states, their inability to grow all that they needed, and their penchant for trade meant that there were a lot of relatively equally wealthy people that wanted/needed to form a team. To do so, they were willing to give up some of their liberties (e.g. giving some of their hard-earned money to the state as taxes) in order to get some rule of law and protection from others. They were NOT, however, interested in giving too many liberties away. After all, they could always pay for a private group to protect them. It just wouldn't be as effective or as efficient. So, how do you ensure the state helps more than it hinders you? As Ancient Greece has a lot of equally powerful people, they gravitated toward a team structured on debates, voting, and elections, or a democracy.

In sharp contrast, much of the agricultural civilizations needed a highly-coordinated and centralized system to construct irrigation canals, cultivated large plots of wheat and rice, and store the reserves. By the time these "teams" were created, some showed through ingenuity, through force, or both that they held the power in this system. Here where Max Weber's definition of a state rings the truest: most of the early autocratic rulers showed they could harness and maintain a monopoly on the use of force. Most also provided the system necessary to harness water, plant and cultivate crops on a large scale, and then distribute these crops when needed. Most also had some legitimatizing myth or story that placed them at the head of it all as well.

That said, autocracies are not all forceful despots with creation myths justifying their rule (though many are). Take my father's trivia team as an example or most Disney movies. There can be kind, thoughtful leaders who want what's best for the team. What autocracies do not have is a lot of people's input into what is best for the team (which democracy-loving people say is key).

I remember reading an article once that said that autocratic regimes would be good at saving the planet if they chose to do it. At first glance, this seems strange, but it is true. It is more efficient to have fewer people to make a decision. The issue is that fewer people may not make a decision that is truly good for all and without a lot of opinions in the room, they don't even know if their choice is good for all.

So, without assuming autocrats are inherently good or evil, what we can say is there are fewer people in power making decisions. This means there are fewer checks and balances when making decisions, fewer viewpoints when deciding whether rules were followed or not, and most importantly, less incentive to take a lot of opinions into consideration.

One of my favorite theoretical explanations of the differences between democracies and autocracies comes from political scientist, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita (BDM). BDM's selectorate theory begins with the assumption that the primary interest of a leader is to remain in power. Within this theory, the selectorate is a name given to the set of people in the state who can take part in choosing a leader (e.g. voting-eligible adults). Bueno de Mesquita argues that the leader cannot please all the selectorate and really doesn't need to. They simply need to determine exactly how many people within the selectorate they do need to stay in power. This smaller group is called the winning coalition.

Here's where the democracy versus autocracy discussion begins. BDM argues that the only real distinction initially between the two types of governments is the relative size of the winning coalition as compared to the selectorate. He argues that democracies tend to have a large winning coalition relative to their selectorates (e.g. 51% of the voting population). In contrast, autocracies tend to have smaller winning coalitions.

To build their winning coalition, a leader must give the people want they want: the goods. But what kind of goods do they want?

Goods are either considered public goods or private goods. A public good is universally enjoyed. As an example, a leader may choose to spend a million dollars building a public park for a town for all to enjoy (i.e. a public good). In contrast, a private good is specifically meant for a few. That same leader above could use the same money instead to buy pieces of property for a few loyal followers to own exclusively (i.e. private goods). The nature of those gifts is quite different. Put simply, though all leaders distribute a combination of public and private goods when a leader needs to make more people happy, they will focus on public goods. And, when a leader needs to make a few people very happy with them, they will distribute private goods.

Though authoritarian leaders need fewer people in their winning coalition to maintain control, each person in that winning coalition matters more for that leader to hold onto power. Imagine there was another member on my father's team who knew a lot about professional soccer (of which my father knows nothing). Though he still wouldn't need the other players so much, if one trivia night MC quizzed them on soccer, this person would prove truly invaluable to my father who could otherwise "run the board" himself. This other, soccer-loving player knows this. After all, the reason my father gets to be the leader is his unwavering ability to win. But what happens if he misses one, two, or ten key questions. When bad nights happen to our more democratic team, so be it. We all were partially to blame. But when it happens to his team, all eyes are on him to fix it or else.

As noted in the Module on the International System, sometimes autocratic governments fall (e.g. the Arab Spring). When they do, it is a pretty harsh fall. Take the worse election night loss for a presidential candidate and then multiply that times decades of oppressing those not in your winning coalition, creating resentment, and then watching as millions of people pull down statues of you and then you from your place at the top of the state.

OK, so maybe autocracies made sense where people gained a monopoly on the use of force over others in places where there were not of people independently wealthy. But some have argued that the "end of history" (predicted to have unfolded in the early 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union) would result in democracies flourishing around the world and autocracies only existing in the history books, as individuals acquired more wealth and then placed more pressure on their governments to democratize.

However, some of the more powerful states in the world are autocratic (see more on China below). So how have autocracies remained? BDM explains that a leader relies on a group of people to stay in power, a group he calls the leader's winning coalition. BDM argues that leaders work to dole out goods to their winning coalition to keep them happy. He argues that democratic leaders also have winning coalitions, though these are usually much larger (e.g. 51% of the popular vote, or, in the U.S., 270 electoral votes).

Types of Autocracies

There are several types of authoritarian governments. Generally, they vary from one another based on two factors: (1) how many people get to be a part of the winning coalition, and (2) just how much control does the state has relative to its people (i.e. how limited are people's liberties)?

When you hear the term dictatorship, you are probably hearing about an autocratic regime where the power rests firmly in the hands of one leader. That does NOT mean this is the only person running things, but it means this person has aligned a small winning coalition around them to keep themselves in power.

In autocracies, this winning coalition can include: the family of the leader, a small group of wealthy people with access to natural resources, the support of the military, and even a civil bureaucracy indebted to the leadership for their positions. In some cases, people within the winning coalition have multiple roles within these different groups (for example, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un's sister is the head of propaganda for his government, his uncle is an ambassador, and his brother and another uncle were both members of the government until both feel out of favor and were assassinated).

If you are moving outward from the leader, autocracies are often referred to by who is in the winning coalition. If the focus really is on the one leader, then dictatorship is the best descriptor. If the leadership within an autocracy is in the hands of one family (most often based on a history of being in the ruling nobility), then this is a monarchy.

If the winning coalition is comprised primarily by the support of the military, the autocracy might be called a military dictatorship. If the leadership is shared among military leaders (e.g. a military committee) with no one clear ruler, a military-led autocracy might better be referred to as a military junta (which was a term first used in Spain to describe military units that resisted Napoleon's invasion).

If the winning coalition is comprised of a group of wealthy people with access to national resources (e.g. oil), then the autocracy might better be labeled an oligarchy. This term originated in Ancient Greece (oligoi means and arkhein means to rule) after a devastating war between Athens and Sparta (i.e. the Peloponnesian War) led a few wealthy Athenians to launch a coup and take control of the former democracy.

In some cases (e.g. Iran), the winning coalition is comprised of a group of religious leaders. This form of autocracy is called a theocracy (theos is Greek for god). In the case of Iran, there is a president and a legislative assembly, but candidates for both are selected by the Shia clerics (the Guardian Council) who are in turn led by one leader, the Supreme Leader.

Though these descriptors tell us the power structure of a state, they do not encompass what the state does. A second variable differentiating autocracies from one another is how these states attempt to control the political, economic, and even social realms of their people's lives. Returning to Rousseau, he argues that all people give up some control over their lives to a state and in return gain stability and order from a rule of law. The more autocratic a state, the more likely it is to have greater control over people's lives beyond creating and monitoring adherence to a rule of law.

Autocracies vary in what they try to control. Some focus on limiting the political rights of people. For some, simply having a hereditary leader (e.g. monarch) is seen as limiting the right of people to elect (and vote against) their leaders. Saudi Arabia has a royal family that took control of Saudi Arabia in 1902 (though the House of Saud has been an influential family for centuries prior). There have been no elections in Saudi Arabia above the municipal level (and even those are quite rare). To assist the king with his rule, nearly 15,000 family members can be appointed to roles (though really an estimated 200 princes wield the real power).

As another example, China holds elections at all levels of government but it has only one political party. As a result, if you are Chinese and wish to vote in state elections, you can either register as a Communist or... well, that's it.

Some autocracies try to regulate the economic realm. The most common practiced means by with an autocracy controls the economy is through direct acquisition of all means of production. If an entire economy is controlled by the state, this is called a pure Communist state.

Want to know more about Communism? Communism had been the brainchild of Karl Marx, an economic philosopher living in a rapidly industrializing and urbanizing Germany. The stated goal of Marx (when spoken of as what Marx wanted Communism to be, it is oftentimes referred to as Marxism) was for a state to stop trying to claim equality for all (e.g. democracies) and then treat people unequal economically. He saw that the class-system led to rich people (i.e. the bourgeoisie, or "haves") getting richer and doing so by extracting more time, labor, skills, resources from the poor people (i.e. the proletariat, or "have nots").

Marx's theory was that the proletariat would realize (1) they were being exploited, (2) there were a lot more of them, and (3) if they worked together, they could overturn this system. When they did overturn the system (which Marx predicted would likely be a violent endeavor), he then envisioned a new system - Communism - in which the state would (1) own all means of production, (2) provide jobs for all, and (3) supply all goods and services people needed. In his vision, the state would take control of the economy for the good of all people. Want to know how communism in practice has turned out? Read about China and Russia below.

Other states attempt to control society itself. This includes what art if produced, whether people can participate in organizations, and at times who they can marry and where they can live. Autocratic states that attempt to control the political, economic, and social aspects of people's lives are called totalitarian (because they are seeing to have total control).

China’s Dynasties

China has always been an autocracy. From its 13 historical dynasties lasting from the Xia in 2070 BC to the abdication of the last Qing emperor in 1912, the government of China was ruled by authoritarian leaders.

The Xia dynasty was founded by the legendary Yu the Great (c. 2123-2025 BC). He was known through a mythical or quasi-legendary as gaining control as it was he (and he alone) that developed a technique that stopped the flooding of the Yellow River. Though many have called the Xia dynasty into doubt, new scientific evidence has shown that there was indeed great flooding of the Yellow River around 2070 BCE.

The next dynastic rulers were the Shang, who likely entered the Yellow River basin on horseback from the eastern Eurasian steppe around 1600 BCE. The Shang honored the original ruler of the Xia, Yu the Great, but they explained the 17th Xia ruler, Jie, was ill-fit to continue to rule. As they took control, the Shang used horse-drawn chariots to create a fast-moving army. With this army, they quickly consolidated control of the Xia dynasty (and likely expanded control of the territory westward along the Yellow River).

The Shang royal family built large thick-walled cities along the Yellow River. In the center of these cities were the royal palaces for the family. Surrounding these palaces (but still within the safety of the walls) was a bureaucratic zone from which the royal family administered rule through civil servants (who were mostly close friends and family).

Beyond the city walls, a feudal class (again mostly comprised of extended friends and family) was given or able to claim and rule large swaths of land. These fiefdoms were in turn worked by peasant farmers. So long as these feudal lords paid the central government in rice harvests, the dynasty would continue to let them flourish independently. The Shang military, noted above, was manned by relatives within the cities and by hired soldiers at the garrisons on the far reaches of the territory.

The next eleven dynasties were the Zhou Dynasty (c. 1046-256 BC), Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC), Han Dynasty (206 BCE-220 AD), the Six Dynasties Period (220 to 589), the Sui Dynasty (581-618), the Tang Dynasty (618-906), the Five Dynasties Period (907-960), the Song (907-960), the Yuan (1279-1368), the Ming (1368-1644) and finally the Qing (1644-1912).

Under the Zhou dynasty, a form of writing was codified, coinage was developed, and the military became extremely organized well-trained (in part with the help of a military strategist, Sun Tzu's important military doctrine called the Art of War, still referenced around the world today). The Zhous also developed the concept of the Mandate of Heaven, which blessed the emperor by the gods.

It was under the Qin that the Chinese obtained an empire, stretching southward to the southeast coast. The Qin also built the Great Wall to protect itself from northern steppe invaders and developed a unified legal code. It was the original Qin leader, Qin Shihuang, who built a mausoleum to himself with 8,000 terracotta soldiers.

Under the Hans, China opened up trade with the West along the Old Silk Road, which stretched from Guangdong China across the steppe as far west as Europe. Though China traded with the western world, it did so in a mercantilist manner. Mercantilism is the strategy by which a state exports (i.e. sells) significantly more than it imports (i.e. buys) from others. In this way, though states are interacting with one another, one state is getting wealthier from the trade relative to the other states. During this time, the name "Han" became synonymous with the ethnic group within the empire. Today, the majority ethnic group in China is referred to as the Han Chinese. This is the largest ethnic group in the world. The subsequent six dynasties were all ruled by Han leaders, though there was internal fighting among them.

Under both the Sui and Tang dynasties, China expanded in population and territory. By the 7th century, China was both the largest and most populated country in the world.

The Five Dynasties and Song were weakened by internal factions as well as attacks from the Mongolians to the north so that by the Yuan dynasty, the Mongols took over the Chinese empire (ruled by Kublai Khan, Genghis Khan's grandson).

Though the Ming dynasty saw the revival of Han rule, it was a weaker version than those before the Mongol invasion. In 1644, the Qing took over control of the empire. This royal family was not ethnically Han, though they ruled over the Han population, but instead ethnically Manchus (from the Manchurian region in the north). One of the chiefs of the Manchus organized his people against the Ming ruler, who had killed his father and grandfather, launching a military campaign that ended in victory. To consolidate control as a minority group, the Qing offered government positions to any Hans who defected from the Ming and allied with them.

China’s Great Fall

(Late Qing Dynasty to 1949)

Much of the territory under China’s control today was held by the Qing. In this way, at the historical height of Chinese power, the Qing dynasty guaranteed the nation’s security by incorporating under Chinese sovereignty a great arc of territory from Manchuria in the east, west through Mongolia to modern Xinjiang Province, and south to Tibet. Security over such a vast amount of territory meant the maintenance of strong land-based armies with the capacity to overpower threats that might invade from either the north or west.

And there was little about which to be concerned. No combination of states in the region could generate sufficient land power to challenge China, and none of the region’s island-states had naval power sufficient to pose a threat to China’s fundamental security from the sea. Nearly all strategic events in East Asia prior to 1840 occurred on the continent and involved amassing strong armies, maneuvering them across the land to meet potential enemies, and building layered defenses to secure the Chinese homeland. Qing leaders failed, however, to complete a similar arc of security on their southern and eastern maritime flanks, leaving China strategically vulnerable to European advances in sea power.

Everything changed in the 1840s with the Opium Wars. Though China had attempted to ban the importation of opium, Great Britain had been illegally importing it from India for China since the late 18th century, resulting in widespread addiction in China and causing serious social and economic disruption. By the 1820s, 77% of Indian opium exports were heading to China.

In March 1839, the Chinese government confiscated and destroyed more than 20,000 chests of opium—some 1,400 tons of the drug—that were being illegally imported by British merchants, dumping them into the South China Sea. Two Opium Wars followed, one between Britain and China from 1839 to 1942, and the other when Britain and France joined forces against China from 1856 to 1860. In both wars, Great Britain’s Royal Navy demonstrated to the Chinese that it was decades, if not centuries, ahead of it in naval prowess.

The Qing were further humiliated in 1895 when Japan defeated them in war, and they were forced to concede territories including the island of Taiwan. The continued decline in the power of the Qing dynasty finally led to a revolt in 1912, and the dynasty was replaced by the Republic of China (ROC). Though this government intended to have a constitutional monarchy, the power of an elected president (Sun Yat-sen) was soon put in the hands of the army leader (Yuan Shikai). Soon after, Yuan instituted himself as Emperor before popular unrest led to his abdication. From 1916 until after World War II, army factions vied for control of the national government and ruled over regions of the country as warlords, known as the Warlords Era.

In 1928, as leader of the Army, Chiang Kai-shek nominally unified China after defeating a group of warlords. As he did, he also purged any pro-Communist leader from the political and the military ranks.

Though he was successful at ridding his Nationalist government of Communists, a strong group of Communist rebels organized around a leader, Mao Zedong, and began plotting for a chance to take over China.

During China's weakened state, the Japanese begin to once again set sights on China. Japan sought to conquer both Chinese territories on the mainland as well as in the South China Sea to provide Japan with raw materials and markets for its goods (as well as more room for its rising population).

It was in 1937, as Japan was expanding southward and Chiang's Nationalist government proved no match, the Chinese guerrillas led by Communist leader, Mao Zedong, continued to fight the Japanese in the newly-conquered area. Though the U.S. tried to bolster the ROC’s ability to fight the Japanese, they were no match for the imperial army and navy’s modern techniques and weapons. Moreover, the ROC was battling the external threat from the Communist guerrillas, further weakening its ability to maintain control.

In the end, Mao and the Communists overthrew Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalists, who retreated to the island of Taiwan. Chiang relocated the ROC seat of government to Taipei, and today, the ROC still claims itself the legitimate government of China and still is organized on the island of Taiwan.

The Rise of Communist China

In light of Chiang and the Nationalists' retreat to Taiwan, the U.S. was opposed to a Communist takeover in China, but at the same time it was concerned about keeping its peace with the Soviet Union (with which it had worked during the war). By 1947, Mao had - with the help of the Soviet Union - successfully ousted the Nationalists who fled to Taiwan and founded the People’s Republic of China (PRC) with Mao chosen as the Communist Party leader.

You have read about how Marx intended for Communism to work. Now, let's examine how it has worked. Though Communism did not take root in Germany, where Marx was writing, it did take off in Russia during World War I. As the Russian Tsar (king), Nicholas II, was sending millions of poor Russians to die on the battlefields and then return home to a life of subsistence farming, many Russians began to listen to the ideas of Vladimir Lenin (a Russian protégé of Marx).

After a successful overturning of the 400-year monarchy and a power struggle among the Communists, Joseph Stalin became the leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Socialist was a rather vaguely-defined term Marx used to denote a half-step between capitalist and communist.

Like Marx, Stalin believed that Communism was synonymous with the industry. After all, during the beginning of the 20th century, industrial giants were able to launch wars, create goods, and trade with others as powerful states. Further, Marx had believed that rural people were too tradition-bound to lead revolutions. And Stalin was successful at both facilitating a revolution and turning Russia (once comprised of about 80% peasants) into the industrial giant of the USSR within decades. To do so, he enacted the most brutal and totalitarian government structures the world has ever seen (see more below).

Mao saw the brutality and discord wrought from Stalin's moves to industry. Further, he was ideologically opposed to the notion that the future of China would need to be industrial and that the peasants were too tradition-bound to be revolutionaries. After all, when Mao fought the Nationalists, he did so with the help of Chinese rural people. And finally, the Soviet Union had restructured an economy with more than 125 million people in 1918. By 1949, China had more than 541 million people. Restructuring this population away from agricultural staple crops would prove difficult and potentially disastrous.

Instead of emphasizing a sudden and major economic shift to industry, Mao instead encouraged the rural peasantry to provide adequate food to all through collective farming measures and small-scale, village-level industries, which would, in turn, allow for more gentle industrialization. The name for his large economic restructuring was the Great Leap Forward.

The idea for restructuring belonged to Mao. When others' input was solicited and criticism given, Mao chose to retrain dissidents in labor camps rather than take their advice. In time, the government was comprised of Mao loyalists or ideological pure Communists, but few technocrats (i.e. experts on the ins and outs of, in this case, political and economic restructuring). The Great Leap Forward soon suffered from lags due to the nature of the reorganization, inefficiencies, and ineptitude of those in charge, and later natural disasters led to crop failures and the death of nearly 20 million people due directly to starvation.

China Opens to the World

(The 1970s to Present)

Though the economic policies of the "Great Leap Forward" were repealed in the 1960s, Mao chose to focus his disappointment on those who called for more technocrats in power. Thus, as the economy was returning to private ownership of farms, Mao began to target those elites in urban areas who had spoken out against his policies. In his next push in 1966, called the Cultural Revolution, he pushed to rid the education, health care, and cultural sectors of people he deemed as elitist. and to mobilize young Chinese urban dwellers to reject the elitists (including their own parents) and join his Red Guard, a group of organized militia loyalists. To keep himself in power, he called on his wife to organize new loyal cultural leaders and he ensured the army leader was aligned with his principles as well. The Cultural Revolution lasted eleven years, until Mao's death in 1976, and resulted in the death and abuse of many urban intellectuals and the purging of at least three million Communist party members, including Deng Xiaoping, a Communist loyalist who pushed policies based on individual incentive structures (rather than pure collective ideology). Deng would later be invited back into the party after Mao's death to rule China from the 1970s until the late 1990s.

After Mao's death, Deng Xiaoping maintained Communism in rhetoric and structure (as noted above, the government today is still run by the Communist party). However, whereas Mao was doggedly anti-capitalist (as capitalism is considered to be the antithesis of Communism), Deng realized that China needed to participate in the global capitalist order to some extent to be economically successful. He planned to "open" China slowly to capitalism (to gain extra profits and help supplement the state's role in the economy) while maintaining a strong role for the state in most economic endeavors.

To do so, China returned to a previous economic strategy it had used under the Han dynasty's trade along the Old Silk Road: mercantilism. That is, China opened a few "special economic zones" (SEZs) on its southeastern coast region (with access to ports to ship goods globally). Then it attracted foreign investment (e.g. high-tech machinery) only to these areas to begin experimenting (in an isolated way) with what the world wanted and how much openness China would need to have to provide the world exports.

Initially, China saw that it was way behind capitalist states (after all, some of the earliest to begin exporting industrial goods began doing so in the late 1700s). How could it possibly catch up? China took a good look at the global economy and realized it had one thing none of these states had: billions of people. And billions of people in China, who had been working as farmers on agriculture collectives, would be more than happy to move to these new industrial centers and earn slightly more than they had previously.

Consider the British industrial sector. There were fewer people to hire and each person required a salary commiserate with the standard of living in London, Manchester, or Birmingham (the other one). These British industrial workers likely had specialized skills in making certain goods (e.g. steel beams), but Chinese workers could make textiles and other high-labor, low-cost goods for much, much cheaper. And they did.

In the 1980s, China contributed about five percent of the world's gross domestic product (total value of produced goods and services). Today it produces more than 21% of the world's total value of goods and services (or one in every five objects you use in a given day). And the type of goods being exported has not only grown in quantity, but it has varied considerably as more and more low, medium, and high-skilled industrial jobs have been moved to China.

Open Economy, Closed Politics

Though China has become an economy powerhouse, all three of the indices mentioned above rank it as autocratic.

The Freedom House classified China as "Not Free." In terms of elections, there are no direct or competitive elections for national leaders (e.g. all candidates for China's legislative branch, the National People's Congress, are chosen to run by the Communist Party). Though independent candidates are allowed at the local level (only), they are often intimidated and harassed if they choose to run. There are eight nominal political parties other the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), but they only serve as advisory roles to the CCP.

The present, and fourth post-Mao, ruler of China, President Xi Jinping, ran on anti-corruption campaign. After winning, he then proceeded to investigate and arrest over a million officials, including senior state and party officials from the security apparatus, the military, the Foreign Ministry, state-owned enterprises, and state media who he feels does not directly align with the party's goals and purposes. In 2012, he also removed all term limits on the role of the President.

Civil liberties are widely curtailed as well, as China has a highly restrictive media environments (e.g. direct ownership overall news outlets and the sole accreditor of all journalists) and its most sophisticated system of censorship, particularly online (to learn more about this topic, take a course with our very own Rongbin Han). Further, social media applications (e.g. WeChat) are known to closely monitor user content to ensure it conforms with government censorship law.

Protests calling for greater democracy have been met with military crackdown (see Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in June of 1989 and how China still works to censor this protest decades later).

The CCP maintains control over news reporting via direct ownership, accreditation of journalists, harsh penalties for public criticism, and daily directives to media outlets and websites that guide coverage of breaking news stories. Education in China is similarly restricted. Freedom House writes that China has "installed surveillance cameras in some classrooms, large-scale recruitment of student informants, and the creation of special departments to supervise the political thinking of teaching staff." Both in the media and education, the government is promoting a doctrine known as "Xi Jinping Thought" (more details below), which focuses on perpetuating Xi Jingping's political goals for the country with little to no input from alternative perspectives.

In terms of political rights, Chinese law formally prohibits any discrimination based on nationality, ethnicity, race, gender, religion, etc. This is consistent in both democracies and communist regimes, as each stands for equality for all under the law. In practice, however, the Chinese government has been known to actively discriminate with groups they view as working at cross purposes to the larger goal of Chinese unity under socialist principles.

One of the key contentious political issues for China are the areas that desire more autonomy. Hong Kong became a British port colony after the Opium Wars under a 99-year lease. Once the lease ended in 1997, the region was transferred back to China as a "special administrative region" (SAR), a governmental structure the PRC calls "one country, two systems" until 2047. Today, much of Hong Kong wishes for full autonomy from China, while China is pushing for further integration of the wealthy region into mainland's economic and political spheres. Macau is another SAR similar to Hong Kong, but less contentious. Taiwan continues to be controlled by the ROC, and while the PRC has never in practice exercised sovereignty over the island, they maintain that it is a renegade province within the PRC. China also has five regions which are called "autonomous regions," meaning they are governed with some independence from the central authority. These include Tibet, Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, Guangxi, and Xinjiang. The Muslim Uyghurs (alternatively spelled Uighurs) minority group in Xinjiang have faced incursions on their civil liberties (including detainment and torture) by the Chinese government in recent years (more details below).

Xi Jinping Thought

As noted above, China was once a powerful dynastic empire, then fell from grace with the Opium Wars against the British and French and further interventions by the Japanese and internal turmoil between the Nationalists and Communists. After World War II, the Communists consolidated power, and Mao began his revolutionary, yet economically disruptive, Great Leap Forward followed by his populist purge of elites in Chinese society known as the Cultural Revolution. After Mao's death, Deng began a small, step-by-step reform of the economy, keeping the state very much in control but opening China to become a key industrial exporter to the world.

Xi Jinping was born to Communist revolutionaries, who served under Mao Zedong. They were later purged from the party by Mao during the Cultural Revolution and Xi was sent as an adolescent to a work camp in a rural area. When the Cultural Revolution ended, Xi asked to remain as a party leader in a rural area. When Deng began to modernize certain coastal areas, however, Xi also requested positions to work there. These two moves allowed him to be at the center of Chinese politics during these two leaders' reigns.

In 2012, when Xi was able to rise to the top of the Communist party ranks and secure his Presidency (Deng was followed by two other party leaders, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, who largely continued Deng's work). Once in power, Xi began consolidating control and projecting the larger goal of China to become center stage.

In a speech at a CCP gathering in 2017, Xi presented his grand strategy for China, which included four broad, related strokes: (1) continued consolidation of political power, (2) domestic economic modernization, (3) rise to global superpower, and (4) projection of a socialist autocratic alternative to Western democracy abroad.

1. Continued Consolidation of Political Power

Xi noted that China would continue to maintain much of the autocratic structure it has in place. He stated that, rather than be dismantled, Chinese socialism would enter "a new era," one in which "socialism with Chinese characteristics [would] display even stronger vitality."

In keeping with his renewed commitment to autocracy, Xi explained that this new era would domestically focus on increasing rather than decreasing the Communist Party as the "highest force for political leadership." In terms of civil society (the role of the people in relation to the government), he promised to develop "the broadest possible patriotic united front" based on "consultative democracy." It is important to note here that consultative democracy is a system by which people play an advisory role in the government rather than directly choose their representatives (the latter being an electoral democracy).

2. Domestic Economic Modernization

In terms of economics, Xi promised that the party and state will work to "consolidate and develop the public sector" as well as continue to "encourage, support, and guide the development of the non-public sector."

One of the key ways he wishes to do this is to work on economic development in the western region of the country. As you may recall from above, the early reforms to the Chinese economy in the 1970s focused on creating "open" free-trade zones in the southeastern coastal region. In his speech, Xi commemorated the domestic successes of "supply-side structural reform" and noted that "regional development has become more balanced."

According to one report, if the plans being drafted come into fruition, China will have access to the economic markets of 60 countries, accounting for 64% of the world's population and 30% of global GDP.

3. Rise to Global Superpower

In order to create greater economic prosperity (and regional balance), the government began the Belt-Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013 (which is known by many names, such as New Silk Road and includes smaller initiatives a well). The larger initiative is a two-part economic infrastructure and trade project. One part focuses on a land trade route (e.g. highways and rail) from the east of China through the western province of Xinjiang before moving into Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Iran, and Turkey. A second sea-based route would connect the coastal regions (e.g. with port infrastructure) to southern coastal allies, like Indonesia, Malaysia India, Sri Lanka, and across the Indian Ocean to East Africa and north to the Red Sea and the Mediterranean.

To assist in this process, China has created a bank to loan other states funds to engage in this process, such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). In doing so, China is ensuring greater economic interdependence with these states, while making interests off the loans. Further, China is creating alternative international organizations to those created by Western states (e.g. the World Bank) that do not include the United States as a member.

These economic steps abroad bring us to the third goal noted by Xi for China's future: the rise of China as a global superpower. In his speech in 2017, Xi describes these economic steps as part of a larger era "that sees China moving closer to center stage and making greater contributions to mankind." In addition to economic influence abroad, Xi also noted that China will project "a strong military in the new era" as well.

4. Western Alternative

Within these first three components is a fourth component: an autocratic alternative to the democratic norms currently being offered to states in the international system. After World War II, the political international organizations created were based on democratic norms (e.g. the United Nations), and the economic organizations were based on capitalism. An example, the World Bank lends money to states at low interest rates for infrastructure projects if these states engage in strong commitments to democratic norms (e.g. the rule of law, elections, and civil liberties, including human rights). In stark contrast, the AIIB requires no commitments to these norms and has been known to offer generous loans to autocratic states.

Moreover, the economic expansion into the western region of China has been done, not for the people of the western region, but despite them. That is, a Muslim minority group allowed the Uyghurs, who are believed to have traveled eastward from Persia along the Old Silk Road have been largely isolated from Chinese influence for centuries. Now, however, as the government wishes to expand westward across the area inhabited by Uyghurs, the Chinese government has begun encouraging the steady increase of ethnic Han Chinese into the region and most alarmingly mandating that more than one million Uyghurs (and ethnic Hui and Kazakh adults as well) be detained in facilities the government calls "reeducation” centers.

Though the Chinese government maintains these centers are for preparing Uyghurs for new, better economic opportunities, reports show that people detained in the camps are required to not practice their Islamic traditions and practices and have faced waterboarding and other forms of torture, sexual abuse, and death in custody.

When asked about the treatment of Uyghurs, some Chinese officials argue that reeducation camps are necessary to combat and prevent future radicalization of Muslims in Xinjiang (in 2014, the government blamed radical Islamists for a series of terrorist attacks in the province).

There are lots of different measurements social scientists apply to states to determine whether they are democratic or authoritarian. Here are the three measurements most often.

The Freedom House Index

The first is the Freedom House Index. Freedom House is a U.S funded non-profit think tank thank conducts research and does advocacy work (i.e. one of the think tanks with a mission) on political freedoms, human rights, and democracy. In addition to conducting research (and measuring democracy in states), Freedom House openly advocates for the free flow of information and ideas and pro-democracy ideals through grants, aid, and training programs around the world.

Ok, but how do they measure democracy? Freedom House defines a distinction between political rights (i.e. the things promised by the state as part of the social contract) and civil liberties (i.e. all the things people get to do without interference from the state). Here is the link to the entire questionnaire, but there are 25 questions (each worth four points) asked specifically about political rights like a rule of law (e.g. "Is there an independent judiciary?") and about elections (e.g. "Was the current head of government or other chief national authority elected through free and fair elections?"). And there are questions asked about the protection of people's liberties (e.g. "Are individuals free to practice and express their religious faith or nonbelief in public and private?" and "e.g. Are individuals free to express their personal views on political or other sensitive topics without fear of surveillance or retribution?" Once all 0-100 scores are calculated, scores are then weighted to allow political rights to count more (as it is the government that is the focus of this measurement). If a state has a high score for political rights and civil liberties, it gets labeled "Free." If it has a low score for political rights, but a high score for civil liberties, it is labeled "Partly Free." And finally, if it has a low score for political rights and civil liberties, it is labeled "Not Free."Below is the latest map for 2019. Free states are in green, Partly Free in yellow, and Not Free in purple.

Polity Index

An admittedly wonky second choice to measure democracy is the Polity index. Originally begun in the 1960s by a political scientist at Princeton University, the dataset includes a 20 point scale to measure types of states from full autocracy (-10) to full democracy (+10). To be a full democracy using this measurement scale, a state would have to offer elections in which candidates have been competitively recruited (+2) and selected from a large group of potential candidates (+1), in which the executive leader has checks on their power (+4), and where political participation (e.g. voting) is encouraged rather than suppressed (+3). To earn a negative ten, a state would not only fail to have these components. In that case, there is a middle category between autocracy and democracy, called anocracy, or "a regime that mixes democratic with autocratic features." Instead, to be an autocracy, a state would be actively working to repress these more democratic structures.

What is especially helpful about this dataset is that it measures changes in regime type of states across long periods of time (beginning in 1800 for some states). Below is a map of the latest measurement classifications for each state. What is unhelpful about this dataset is it places a very large focus on elections, without considering larger concerns about promoting the rule of law and protecting liberties.

The Economist's Democracy Index

Last, but certainly not least, is the Democracy Index published annually by The Economist, a British media outlet in business since 1845. This index looks at five components, each of which explains a rather essential element of the democratic process: (1) Electoral process and pluralism, (2) Functioning of government, (3) Political participation, (4) Democratic political culture, and (5) Civil liberties.

Like the other two above, this index focuses on open and fair elections. In the first section, "Electoral process and pluralism section," this index asks survey questions like: "Are citizens free to form political parties that are independent of the government?" and "Following elections, are the constitutional mechanisms for the orderly transfer of power from one government to another clear, established and accepted?"

This index also considers the rule of law (e.g. "Functioning of government"), with questions like: "Do freely elected representatives get to determine government policy?" and "Is there an effective system of checks and balances on the exercise of government authority?"

Further, this index also incorporates questions about Civil Liberties into this index (e.g. freedom of speech, assembly, etc). For this section, questions include: "Is there freedom of expression and protest (bar only generally accepted restrictions, such as banning advocacy of violence)?" and "Is media coverage robust? Is there open and free discussion of public issues, with a reasonable diversity of opinions?"

There are two other categories mentioned in this index that extend beyond those covered in the other two: Political Participation and Democratic Political Culture. These two put together can assess the role of individuals in the social contract. That is, this index not only looks at the original agreement made between the state and its people (the state provides a rule of law and protects civil liberties, while the people follow the rule of law and make assessments of the leadership via regular elections).

Instead, this Political Participation component of the index attempts to analyze the manner in which people (with some questions directed at the state) and uphold their end of the contract.

Some key items include:

• Voter participation/turn-out for national elections (above 70%, between 70% ad 50%, and below 50%)

• Do ethnic, religious, and other minorities have a reasonable degree of autonomy and voice in the political process? (yes, yes with flaws, no)

• Women in parliament? (more than 20% of seats, between 20% and 10%, and <10%)

• Citizens’ engagement with politics (high, moderate, low)

• The preparedness of population to take part in lawful demonstrations (high, moderate, low)

• The preparedness of population to take part in lawful demonstrations (high, moderate, low)

And finally, the Political Culture component of the index looks at how people see one another and the role of the state within the larger system.

• Is there a sufficient degree of societal consensus and cohesion to underpin a stable, functioning democracy? (yes, yes but some serious doubts and risks, no)

• Proportion of the population that desires a strong leader who bypasses parliament and elections (low, moderate, high)

• Proportion of the population that would prefer military rule (low, moderate, high)

• Proportion of the population that would prefer rule by experts or technocrats (low, moderate, high)