The Changing Structure Of Political Opportunity And Political Participation

This study analyzes influences of China’s Internet access, new media and politicalopportunity structure on political participation and then compares them. Based on theintegration of quantitative and qualitative methods, I explore related public politicalparticipation behavior change (such as the scales, choices, strategies and forms ofparticipation) in China, analyze and evaluate the current situation of governance response.This study aims to provide theoretical support for China’s political and socialtransformation in this drastic reform period, to present matching conditions betweenpolitical participation, political opportunity structure and state governance response, andto incorporate China’s related practices and theoretical achievements into the theoreticalsystem of political science, thus finding a new avenue for the research on stategovernance.To begin with, this study retrospectively evaluates the developments of subjectdistribution, concept development, theoretical evolution and empirical studies in existingresearch achievements from both the macro and micro aspects, and then points out theshortcomings of current literatures—single research perspective, stuffless researchcontent, controversial testing results, unbalanced research methods, deficient crossvalidation, which makes it impossible to increase the knowledge of current social scienceresearch. This section lays the theoretical foundation for establishing a systematicresearch framework. Secondly, I simply review the evolution of political information communicativemedium and influences of different communicative mediums on political participation, andanalyze the effect of Internet access and new social media on political participation inChina, especially the roles of Internet in increasing the speed of political informationcommunication, improving its effectiveness and expanding its space. The negative impactof new social media on political participation and corresponding correction methods arealso taken into account.Meanwhile, by comparing traditional analytical perspectives on political participation,this article provides a new angle as political opportunity structure. Based on reviews ofhistorical conditions of political opportunity structural change and related empirical tests, Iexpand the research scope of political opportunity structure theory and illustrate itsadaptability to the explanation of political participation, reveal the evolution process andcausal mechanism of political participation, as well as build a bridge betweenmacro-research and micro-analysis, thus helping people to better understand theemergence, development and result of political participation.In addition, based on the above general theoretical framework, taking China as anexample, this study analyzes the actual influences of Internet access, new social mediaand political opportunity structural change on political participation.To test the applicability of related theories in China’s practice, the dissertation startswith a case study and a quantitative study to conduct a comparative analysis. The casestudy analyzes the common phenomenon of public political participation inChina—petitions (appealing by letter or in person). It discusses the process of Internettechnology being applied in petitions by the public and governments, and the opening ofpolitical opportunity window in the institutional change of China’s petitions, whichdemonstrates the flexibility of China’s governments confronting the impact of newinformation technology on political structure as well as the adaptability of the public facingthe rapid development of information technology and political opportunity. The quantitative study employs the data of China Family Panel Studies (2010) by theInstitute of Social Science Survey in Peking University to run multivariate regressionmodels, and then test the influences of Internet access, new social media use and politicalopportunity structure variables on votes in community selection. The results are showedas followings: Internet access and new social media use together will significantlyincrease the public’s political participation; political opportunity structure is in directproportion with political participation; compared with political opportunity structure, newsocial media use has much stronger impact on political participation, which means that thetransparency and openness of information are more influential than political participationchannels.Last but not least, based on the above exploration, the piece tests the possibility andnecessity of incorporating China’s political participation into the research field of stategovernance, evaluate China’s current state governance response strategies and policies,and then discuss the room for further improvements. This paper clearly states that themain categories of current state governance response exist in Political Input Phaseinstead of Political Output Phase; and response strategies aiming at the short-termimprovement are much more than those aiming at long-run institutionalization. With therapid enlargement of political participation, the improvement of state governanceresponse strategies should be more comprehensive, coherent and robust, with the properuse of informal responses, so as to establish a new state governance system adapting tothe practical needs of our social development, and to advance the realization ofhigh-quality political participation and the modernization of state governance in China.