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The purpose of this paper is to provide an explanation of China’s high performance despite several factors that would indicate otherwise according to conventional wisdom. The authors argue that conventional wisdom is problematic in regards to China. First, it provides too narrow a definition of political reform. Second, although it asks the right question about political discretion, the inappropriate definition of political reform leads it to the wrong conclusion. Third, though much is wrong with the system of property rights in China, looking for a system of such rights as exists in the West has confused many analysts. Rights are not as secure in China as they could be, and the absence of a law of property and contracts along with a judicial system to enforce it remains a significant lacuna in the reform process. And yet, property rights are not completely insecure and without political foundations. Indeed, political reform in China has provided considerable limits on the discretion of the central government. These limits, in turn, provide the beginnings of a strong and credible political foundation for many market-oriented enterprises throughout the successful regions of China. China has a new political system that we characterize as federalism, Chinese style. This system, in turn, provides considerable political protection for China’s reforms, including limits on the central government. Viewed from the perspective of the individual, this system differs considerably from federalisms in the developed West.

This chapter chapter provides a critical review of Charter 08's compatibility and inconsistency with the existing constitutional and legal order. Charter 08 is a sophisticated document that both reflects a Western bourgeois agenda in advocating a new liberal order and engages the existing system in calling on the Party-state to live up to its own rhetoric of rights. Because the charter adopts official rights discourses to challenge the government, it opens a window of opportunity for a possible alliance between the Chartists outside the political system and reformers within the political system. In the end, the perceived danger of Charter 08 can only be understood within China's segmented publics, in which the Chinese government sets formal and informal rules to limit discussions of particular issues to specific institutional spaces.

This chapter provides a historical background discussion of the legal rights-based weiquan movement in China, traces the tension between the supply and demand of rights, and explains an institutional failure in meeting the increasing demand for rights and the social consequences of that failure. Armed with legal rights, citizens of different social and economic backgrounds have started to assert these and engage in a movement of rightful resistance. Gradually, law has become a rallying point for aggrieved people, and lawyers have become organizers of an emerging social movement. However, the brutal social changes and acute conflicts are often beyond the capacity of legal norms and institutions to grasp. As a result, the legal system has failed to serve as a governing tool for the Party-state and to provide remedies for citizens seeking justice — both are giving up on law and resorting to extralegal and illegal measures to settle the score.

Charter 08 is a document that seeks to forge a grand alliance of Chinese liberal elements within the system and outside the system. Its signatories and supporters include known dissidents as well as officials, retired officials, and others from within the system. More significantly, Charter 08 symbolizes yet another alliance between political dissidence and the weiquan movement which is more rooted in Chinese society. The two political forces have been sharply divided since 1989. While the former challenges the CCP directly and calls for a fundamental political change, the latter takes concrete actions in protecting the legal rights of citizens within the framework of the existing political system. Charter 08 provides a common ground for the two forces.

This chapter considers Charter 08 as a manifestation of China's long fight for dignity by generations of dissidents. Indeed, despite the different views between Wei Jingsheng and Liu Xiaobo on Charter 08, they are both part of a common intellectual history and political movement. Speaking one's mind against the government when called for and fighting for a political system that one believes in is, in essence, what a self-respecting person would do in keeping his or her dignity. After all, only human beings are capable of transcending basic animal instincts for the pursuit of higher values. It is that pursuit of higher values that has been motivating dissidents and activists in a hostile environment.

This chapter places Charter 08 in the comparative and historical context of popular constitutionalism. Popular constitutionalism appeals to the understanding of generations of people who make use of, and give meaning to, the constitutional text. It also speaks to the tension and dialogue between the popular and official components in the constitutional development. Putting it in the Chinese context, this chapter traces the growth of popular constitutionalism from the trial of the Gang of Four, the creeping Parliamentarianism, and public litigation and petition. Significantly, popular constitutionalism continues to evolve and develop in the form of online and offline citizen activism even though it is facing the post-2005 crackdown. Charter 08 is part of the evolving popular constitutionalism in China and its significance lies in its ability to broaden and free the epistemological space.

This analysis of the weiquan movement focuses on its “dark sides.” Drawing on interviews with lawyers and petitioners, this chapter describes the at-times brutal persecution of rights defenders and discusses increasingly vindictive and violent reactions among some members of the movement. A brief review of attitudes toward violence amongst petitioners, intellectuals, and lawyers shows that beneath an oft-asserted commitment to non-violence in political resistance, there is much doubt and debate within the movement, and that to some violence seems to be the only last answer. While Charter 08 provides little guidance on how to effect the rational, liberal transformation of Chinese society that is so clearly its vision, its protagonist Liu Xiaobo is perhaps best understood through his noble but hard-to-emulate credo of “having no enemies.” In that sense, Charter 08 represents a moral challenge both to the repressive authoritarian state and to the weiquan movement.

This chapter explores the psychology of resistance that explains why and how some people refuse to back down, acquiesce, accommodate official lies, and reach arrangements with the system. In a largely “neo-totalitarian” system like that of China today, the problem is no longer naked fear such as might be induced by a tyrannical regime. Rather, it is the ability to avoid thinking, “that hard-to-attain confusion” that allows people not even to be aware of their deep-down anxieties and constraints. While some observers believe that the government has won legitimacy in the sense of wide social acceptance of its rule, this analysis leaves no room for such a comforting conclusion. There is no doubt that political change will come eventually — “you can destroy the flowers but you can’t prevent spring”.

This chapter examines two essays Addams later revised as chapters in Democracy and Social Ethics titled “Political Reform” and “Charitable Effort.” The first analyzes corrupt politician Johnny Powers’ hold on Chicago’s immigrants; the second is about a charity visitor perplexed by the ethics of her immigrant clients. The chapter details Addams’s use of Wilhelm Wundt’s evolutionary history of ethics to portray Chicago at that time as a layered moral geology, with many immigrants holding to a primitive form of morality. Acknowledging that perplexities are inevitable at times of social disequilibrium, Addams directs her critique at those already occupying higher moral strata, namely, political reformers and those practicing advanced techniques in charity administration. Addams calls for these reformers to create social cohesion by developing a sense of identification with those they consider beneath them on the moral evolutionary scale.

This chapter offers a comparison between Charter 08 and Charta 77, the manifesto written by Czechoslovak dissidents, mainly Vàclav Havel and Jan Patocka, to demand the respect of human rights by the Communist Party in Czechoslovakia. The two charters are similar in their content, both invoking international human rights norms and both attempting to function largely within the existing legal framework. Another related similarity between the two lies in the fact that their objectives are not so much to subvert the regimes as to provide a support structure when the regimes fall. However, despite their similarities, both exist in drastically different political and economic contexts. China in 2008 was different from Czechoslovakia in 1977 in terms of the politics, economy, and soft power that the respective communist parties may have, and those differences affect the impact of the respective charters in society.

The conclusion shows how despite much change Ireland stll remains a state wherein political continuity remains an important theme within Irish life. This is best exemplified by the fact that Fianna Fáil despite presiding over the economic collapse and the ending of Irish economic sovereignty managed to gain the largest amount of votes at the 2014 loal elections. It outlines various reform scenarios and shows how difficult it is for new political options to emerge.

The present chapter aims to provide insights into Oman’s political culture, with particular attention to the status of tribes and tribalism in the modern state and the influence of tribal values on Oman's domestic and foreign policy. It argues that the reduced power of tribes in the political arena of contemporary Oman has largely been a result of deliberate policies on the part of Sultan Qabus, designed to preserve the cultural values of tribes while at the same time neutralize the tribes' ability to harm his regime. It concludes with an appraisal of the steps taken to broaden political participation in Oman after the outbreak and continuation of unrest that has typified the Middle East since 2011, and the impact of these measures on tribal identification in contemporary Oman. An examination of Oman’s cautious political reforms reveals that tribal identification is alive and well, but so too is a distinct Omani national ethos which was made possible by the Omani renaissance ushered in by Sultan Qabus.