24 PEKING POLITICS,I9I8-1923 CONSTITUTIONALISM AND ITS FAILURE 25 lematic.But the Chinese did have a problem to which the solution seemed ap- back.Today among those that are the shepherds of men there is not in the whole world propriate:how to release the innate energy of the community and turn it into a one who does not delight in slaughter.Should such a one arise,then all people on earth source of national strength.7 To Chinese eyes,the constitutionalist connection would look towards him with outstretched necks.If he were indeed such a one,the between the individual's interests and those of the state was seen as a device people would come to him as water flows downward,in a flood that none could hold capable of arousing the people to greater effort and creativity on behalf of na- back."71 tional goals.The trouble with old China,many modern Chinese thinkers have The Mencian notion is that,in Cohen's paraphrase,"just policies and causes believed,was the passivity and narrow selfishness of the people.In a modern command popular support,"and"a ruler with popular support is invincible. state,on the other hand,because the people rule,they devote themselves whole- Constitutionalism could be seen as such a just policy.The popular support it heartedly to the nation.When there are"ten thousand eyes with one sight,ten would command would,on the Rousseauian assumptions of its supporters, thousand hands and feet with only onc mind,ten thousand ears with one hear- provide the key to wealth and power for China. ing,ten thousand powers with only one purpose of life;then the state is cstab- Constitutionalism,in short,achieved intellectual plausibility as a device to lished ten-thousandfold strong....When mind touches mind,when power is save China when it was interpreted in the light of deeply rooted assumptions linked to power,cog to cog,strand around strand,and ten thousand roads meet available in the Chinese tradition.Once a proper constitution was written and in one center,this will be a state."68 The theme of constitution as energizer, promulgated,it could be willed to succeed.Because it would be a correct although initially found on the monarchist side of the European debate,was constitution,it would achieve popular support.Because it would involve the eventually developed to its highest point in the West by Rousseau,who showed people,it would tap wells of popular commitment.China would be invincible. in The Social Contract how constitutionalist assumptions could conduce to The scientific claims of Western experts and the successful experiments in the strengthening the national community and its"general will."In this sense, West and Japan provided any proof needed that this solution would succeed. the 1906 imperial edict cited at the beginning of this chapter(That other coun- tries are wealthy and strong is primarily due to the adoption of a constitution, The Problem of Failure by which all the people are united in one body and in constant communication) was in the Rousseauian tradition.9 The irony of China's constitutional experiment was that the country imported The Chinese were particularly equipped to perceive and develop this aspect a Western ideology founded on individualism and conflict because of its pre- of constitutional thought because of its resonances with what Paul Cohen has sumed ability to overcome individualism and conflict.In the twelve years after called "the Mencian view of power."0 Throughout Mencius is the powerful the death of Yuan Shih-k'ai the young republic saw ten heads of state,forty- image of the people flocking to the benevolent ruler. five cabinets,five legislatures,and seven constitutions or basic laws-not count- "If there were a single ruler,"Mencius told King Hsiang,"who did not delight in ing the rival heads of state,cabinets,parliaments,and constitutions in Canton.73 slaughter,he could unite the whole world." Instead of uniting state and citizen in a new consensus,constitutionalism "And who would side with him?"the king asked. "Everyone in the world.Your majesty knows how in the seventh and eighth months 71.Arthur Waley,Three Ways of Thouglt in Ancient China(New York,nd),p.91. the new grain becomes parched.But soon the clouds roll up,heavy rain falls,and the 72.Cohen,"Wang Tao,"p.160.Cohen points out the obvious relevance to Mao. young plants shoot up in lusty growth.When this is so,it is as if nothing could hold them 73.The figure for heads of state is compiled from data provided by the Oral History Project of the Institute of Moder History,Academia Sinica,Taipei,Taiwan.It includes 67.This discussion draws heavily on Hao Chang's brilliant Liang Ch'i-ch'ao ad Intellectual four presidents,one chief executive (Tuan Ch'i-jui),one marshal (Chang Tso-lin),and four Transition in China,1890-1907(Cambridge,Mass.,1971). regent cabinets.The figure for cabinets is obtained from Ch'en Hsi-chang.Pei-yang fs'an 68.Ibid.,p.100,quoting Liang Ch'i-ch'ao.See generally Chang's chapters 4and 6. sang shih-lua(Tainan,1967),vol 2,appendix 2,pp.504-509.The five legislatures indude 69.That this Rousseauian,communitarian theme is also a key assumption of Maoist two sessions of the old parliament,one of the Anfu parliament,the Provisional National thinking is pointed out in Benjamin I.Schwartz,"The Reign of Virtue:Some Broad Council of 1917-18 and the Provisional National Council of 1925.The seven constitutions Perspectives on Leader and Party in the Cultural Revolution,"in John Wilson Lewis,ed. are the Provisional Constitution as interpreted from 1916 to 1917,the Provisional Constitu- Party Leadership and Revolutionary Power in Chin(Cambridge,England,197),pp.149-69. tion as interpreted from 1917 to 1922,the Provisional Constitution as interpreted from 1922 70.Paul A.Cohen,"Wang T'ao's Perspective on a Changing World,"in Albert Feuer- to 1923,the Ts'ao K'un constitution of 1923-24,the Regulations of the Executive Govern- werker,Rhoads Murphey,and Mary C.Wright,eds.,Approaches to Modem Chinese History ment,1924-26,the Provisional Constitution as interpreted from 1926 to 1927,and the (Berkeley,Calif.,1967),p.160. regulations of the Marshal's government,1927-28
26 PEKING POLITICS,I918-1923 provided a medium for amplifying dissension and disorder.Where was the flaw in the Chinese logic?What missing element would make a constitution work? I To ask this is to raise questions so complex and ramified that they have never been answered adequately for the politics of any country:what social,econom- ic,psychological,and cultural conditions are needed for particular patterns of government to function?74 Modern social science at least knows how little it knows about this set of questions.In China's twentieth-century search for na- FACTIONALISM AND POLITICAL tional strength based on political unity and consensus,the constitutionalist solution was undermined by many factors whose separate effects we are still RECRUITMENT unable to weigh.A sullen,desperate peasantry;a fragmented military scattered over a vast,poorly integrated national landscape;a hierarchical,authoritarian, and personalistic elite political culture-these were some of the refractory blocks with which the new China had to be built.The belief that a certain kind of "Old China,"as Lyon Sharman points out,"was governed by a vast outreach- normative political order imposed at the top could bring all these elements into ing network of officials organized upon the strict principle of graded subordina- line was clearly,in retrospect,mistaken.But more revolutionary solutions were tion....None of these individuals ruled in collaboration with equals;each suggested neither by foreign precedent nor by elite self-interest-not,that is, was a highly individualized trustee of power stationed at a particular post.... until the bankruptcy of the republic became inescapably clear.Meanwhile,the By the revolution of 1911,the huge nation that is China was required to trans- only cure for constitutionalist chaos was felt to be more constitutionalism.But form itself by the mere writing of a constitution from a close-knit hierarchy of repeated doses of constitutionalism had no mitigating effect upon the real,and individual officials to a federation of popularly elected provincial legislatures, destructive,dynamic of politics-factionalism. each with its attendant executive and judiciary,"the whole headed by a pre- 74.This is the general theoretical issue lying behind such specific formulations as"What sident,cabinet,and parliament at Peking.1 are the conditions for 'stable democracy'?""What are the causes ofrevolution?"and"What The transformation did not work."Chinese in all walks of life understand are the effects of modernization on politics?"Each question has recently produced a large but what it is to be trusted with authority,and what it is to be subordinated to inconclusive literature. authority.But to be thrown into equality-groups with no one in authority and no one subordinated calls for a radical change of their whole sense of human relationships."Rather than make such a change,bureaucrats and politicians 1.Sharman,Sun Yat-sen,pp.353,356. 2.Sharman,Sumt Yat-sen,p.363.Sharman's argument points to the contribution that the political culture approach makes to understanding factionalism in China-roughly,that the hierarchical and authority-"dependent"Chinese culture makes factions a particularly comfortable form of organization.This does not mean,however,that factionalism is a peculiarly Chinese phenomenon.Almost all other cultures seem to contain elements that make factionalism possible.Comparative study might show that Chinese factions are more frequent,politically more central,more stable and persistent,or more hierarchical than factions in some other cultures.Three works that discuss Chinese political and organizational culture inways that are particularly relevant to the factionalism problem are Lucian W. Pye,The Spirit fChinese Politics:A Psychocutral Study of the Authority Crisis in Political Development(Cambridge,Mass.,1968):Robert Henry Silin,"Management in Large-Scale Taiwanese Industrial Enterprises"(Ph.D.diss,Harvard University,1970);and Richard H. Solomon,Mao's Revolution and the Chinese Political Culure(Berkeley,Calif,1971). 27
28 PEKING POLITICS,I918-1923 FACTIONALISM AND POLITICAL RECRUITMENT 29 fell back informally on familiar hierarchical forms of cooperation.Instead of Factions Defned 'equality groups,"they organized themselves in personal followings,each centered on a particular leader and composed of his individually recruited, Let us begin with a kind of human behavior found in all societies-the"clientel- personally loyal followers.It was as if the removal of the dynasty had initiated ist tie."6 A clientelist tie is a nonascriptive two-person relationship founded on an unravelling of the great skein of hierarchical relationships that had been exchange,in which well-understood rights and obligations are established the old Chinese bureaucracy.It now broke down into its smallest constitu- between the two parties.The earmarks of a clientelist tie are as follows: ent informal units of cooperation.Parties,parliaments,cabinets,clubs, 1.It is a relationship between two people. bureaucracies-all seemed to degenerate into the lowest common organization- 2.It is a relationship especially selected for cultivation by the members from al denominator in their real functioning,even while maintaining their respective their total social networks. organizational facades. 3.It is cultivated essentially by the constant exchange of gifts or services This factional form of organization gave rise in tumn to what Sharman calls (this does not imply that the subjective content of the relationship is cynical or "disintegrative bebavior""processes of disintegration that frustrate group unfriendly:the contrary is normally the case). functioning."As she describes the process: 4.Since the exchange involves the provision by each partner of goods or A group is nucleating about some project which shows promise of success.Those who services the other wants,the parties to the tie are dissimilar;very often they wish the project ill or those who covet it for themselves attack it with criticism,severely, are unequal in status,wealth or power. often violently,insisting that the organization of the nucleus is wrong,or arguing for 5.The tie sets up well-understood,although seldom explicit,rights and drastic modification ofits purposes and objectives,or for the removal of thisor that person obligations between the partners. from the group....[The group]disintegrates before such an attack.The result is that a fresh nucleus must be formed,and it is subjected to a similar attack,and in turn dis- 6.It can be abrogated by either member. integrates....and China wonders why there is chaos!3 7.It is not exclusive;either member is free to establish other simultancous ties(so long as they do not involve contradictory obligations). Why might leaders who were committed to constitutionalism and to making China strong repeatedly resort to such disintegrative behavior in cabinets, Such ties include patron-client relations,godfather-parent relations,some parliaments,and political parties?4 The argument developed here is that in a types of trader-customer relations,and so forth.Corporate ties,such as lineage political arena,like the early republican national government,organized pri- relations,comembership in an association,or comembership in a group of marily by factions,leaders'constructive long-term goals are subordinated to the blood brothers exceeding two in number,are not clientelist ties,although immediate tactical demands of confict,in such a way as to produce a kind of shared corporate membership often provides an initial contact which leads to disintegrative behavior profoundly subversive of a constitutional system.5 the establishment of clientelist ties as defined here. The clientelist tie must be clearly distinguished from two other kinds of 3.Sharman,Sun Yat-sem,pp.360,362,367. effect on conflict behavior.Furthermore,insofar as structural constraints explain behavior, 4.If it were only the politicians of the early republic who were guilty of such behavior, they can be applied to settings other than early republican China;an abstract model is thus one might dispose of this question by discrediting their motives.But when Kuomintang. more useful for comparative work than a case study in which various elements of explana- CCP,and other twentieth-century Chinese leaders seem to have been dogged by the same tion are not clearly distinguished. organizational problems,it is more difficult to argue that their commitment to the goal of 6.In recent years,studies of the political and other functions of clientelist ties have a strong China was only a slogan.On the KMT,see,inter alia,Sharman,Sun Yat-sen; proliferated.Terminology varies("dyadic contract,""dyadic alliance,""patronage tie," Hung-mao Tien,Govemment and Politics in Kuomintang China,1927-1937(Stanford,Calif, "patron-client tie,"and so on).but there is little question that various authors are referring 1972);Lloyd E.Eastman,"China's Abortive Revolution:China Under Nationalist Rule, to the same quite clearly defined phenomenon.Among the many discussions of clientelist 1927-1937,"manuscript of a forthcoming book,n.d.On the CCP,see Andrew J.Nathan, ties or their political uses are George M.Foster,"The Dyadic Contract:a Model for the "A Factionalism Model for CCP Polities,"CQno.53 (January-March 1973).pp.52-66. Social Structure ofa Mexican Peasant Village,"in Jack M.Potter,May N.Diaz,and George 5.The argument in the following three sections of this chapter was first presented in M.Foster,eds.,Peasant Society:A Reader(Boston,1967),pp.213-30;James C.Scott,"Pa- Nathan,"A Factionalism Model,"pp.34-52.It is couched at the level of abstract "model- tron-Client Politics and Political Change in Southeast Asia,"American Political Science building"in order to demonstrate the strictly structural nature of the argument.I am trying Review 66,no.1(March 1972):91-113(hereafter abbreviated APSR);and Carl H.Lande, to show which aspects of early republican political behavior can be explained in terms of "Networks and Groups in Southeast Asia:Some Observations on the Group Theory of factionalism alone,before proceeding toa discussion of the specific historical setting and its Politics,"APSR 67,no.1(March 1973):103-27
30 PEKING POLITICS,I9I8-1923 FACTIONALISM AND POLITICAL RECRUITMENT 3I relationship with which it is readily confused,the power relationship and the tion and wielding of influence (i.c.,political conflict).I am concerned here (generic)exchange relationship.To take the second problem first,the clientelist with the latter function.What happens when political conflict is organized pri- tie is founded on exchange.But,according to Peter M.Blau,all social processes marily through clientelist ties rather than through formal organizations,cor- except those that are irrational or non-goal-oriented or expressive-in other porate lineage units,or mass or class movements?I would argue that there are words,all social processes in which people interact with other people in order three possibilities. to elicit behavior instrumental to some goal-can profitably be analyzed in First,the individual seeking to engage in political conflict may do so by terms of exchange.?And,according to Marshall Sahlins,any kind of recipro- cashing in on his personal ties in order to operate as a power broker,without city,including the "negative reciprocity"of an eye for an eye,can be usefully directly and explicitly involving his partners in any common or sustained en- classified as exchange.8 Blau and Sahlins are persuasive on the utility of their deavor.Examples include influence-peddling by lawyers who specialize in ar- respective analytical systems,but it is essential to be clear that the clientelist tie ranging access to particular bureaucracies,mediation of political disputes by as defined here is an exchange relationship of a limited and specific kind.Em- middlemen,and the bridging of government/village gaps by local"linkage bedded in different cultures,it takes somewhat different forms and is more or figures."1 The second possibility,which occurs in a setting of genuine electoral less explicitly recognized,spelled out,legitimated,and reinforced.But,in any competition,has been called the“clientelist party,”“vertical group”,or casc,it is relatively stable and persistent,involves well-understood rights and "machine"a mass political organization that buys electoral support with obligations,and is purposely cultivated by the participants.If nearly all of particularistic rewards distributed through a leader-follower network of social life is to be regarded as exchange,then clientelist ties should be regarded clientelist tics.18 as a special,quasi-contractual subtype ofexchange relationship. The third possibility occurs in an oligarchic or relatively small-scale setting At the other extreme,the clientelist tie must be distinguished from the when an individual leader mobilizes some portion of his network of primary, power relationship of"imperative coordination."If for some reason the sub- ordinate has no real choice but obedience,the consequences for political beha- among others,James N.Anderson,"Buy-and-Sell and Economic Personalism:Foundations vior of the superior-subordinate relationship will be quite different from what for Philippine Entrepreneurship,"Asian Survey 9,no.9(September 1969):641-68;Mary R. Hollnsteiner,"Social Structure and Power in a Philippine Municipality,"in Potter,et al., they would be if the real possibility of abrogating the tic existed.Since the eds.Peasant Society:A Reader,pp.200-212:Sidney W.Mintz,"Pratik:Haitian Personal consequences are so different,the distinction is analytically necessary.It may Economic Relationships,"ibid.,pp.98-110:and Robert H.Silin,"Marketing and Credit be objected that,in many cases,the right of abrogation formally exists but in in a Hong Kong Wholesale Market,"in W.E.Willmott,ed.,Economic Organization in fact cannot be exercised,as in the relationship between landlord and tenant on Chinese Society (Stanford,Calif.,1972).pp.327-52. some Latin American haciendas,or between lord and vassal in feudal Europe. 12.See,for example,Karl D.Jackson,"Communication and National Integration in These relationships,I would argue,should be regarded as relationships of im- Sundanese Villages:Implications for Communications Strategy"paper prepared for pre- sentation at a meeting of the Indonesia Seminar,Southeast Asia Development Advisory perative coordination rather than as clientelistic relations.Of course it is often Group,New York City,March 30-April 1,1972;Martin and Susan Tolchin,To the difficult to tell the difference.There is a grey area,e.g.,as the hold of the land- Victor...Political Patronage from the Clubhouse to the White House (New York,1972); lord begins to weaken but before it is effectively challenged by that of a local William Foote Whyte,Street Comer Socety:The Social Structure ofn Italian Shn,enl.ed. political machine.The analytic boundary lies somewhere within that grey (Chicago,1955),pt.2. area. 13.Distinctions can probably fruitfully be made between"clientelist parties,"defined as Clientelist ties in a given society articulate to form complex networks that integrating all levels of the political system through clientelist ties,and"machines,"defined as operating strictly on the local level.Among the major theoretically-oriented studies of serve many functions,including social insurance,10 trade,11 and the mobiliza- such organizations are James C.Scott,Comparative Political Corrrption(Englewood Cliffs, N.J.,1972),chapters 6-9;and John Duncan Powell,"Peasant Society and Clientelist Poli- 7.Peter M.Blau,Exchange and Power in Social Life (New York,1964),p.5 and passim. tics,"APSR 64.no.2 (June 1970):411-25.For case studies of political systems organized by 8.Marshall D.Sahlins,"On the Sociology of Primitive Exchange,"in Michael Banton, clientelist parties,see Robert H.Dix,Colombia:The Political Dimnensions of Change (New ed..The Relevance of Models for Social Anthropology (London,1965),p.144 and passim. Haven,Conn.,1967),esp.Chapters 8 and 9;Keith R.Legg,Politics in Modem Greece(Stan- 9.Max Weber,The Theory of Social and Economic Organization,trans.by A.M.Henderson ford,Calif..1969),esp.Chapters 6-8;Myron Weiner,Party Building in a New Nation:The and Talcott Parsons (New York,1964),pp.152-53 Indian National Congress(Chicago,1967);and William Foote Whyte,Street Comer Society, 10.Cf.Foster,,“Dyadic Contract” esp.Chapter 6.I am grateful to Michael Bucuvalas and Pedro Cabin for bringing Legg and 11.For suggestive studies of clientelist ties in operation in nonpolitical contexts,see Dix to my attention
32 PEKING POLITICS,I9I8-1923 secondary,tertiary ties,and so on for the purpose of engaging in politics.A Figure 1.Some Factional Configurations machine or clientelist party consists of a great many layers of personnel,but this third type of clientelist political structure consists of only one or a few layers.15 I call such a structure-one mobilized on the basis of clientelist ties to engage in politics and consisting of a few,rather than a great many,layers of personnel a faction.16 Such configurations include what may be called simple or complex factions and may control from within or without one or more "support Simple faction structures"or power bases,such as clubs,parties,mobs,newspapers,banks, ministries,armies,and the like (see Figure 1).What all these configurations share in common is the one-to-one,rather than corporate,pattern of relation- ships between leaders(or subleaders)and followers,Structurally,the faction is articulated through one or more nodes,and it is recruited and coordinated on the basis of the personal exchange relationships I have called clientelist ties.17 Structural Characteristics of Factions Because it is based upon personal exchange ties rather thanthorityreations 14.For ways of conceptualizing a network from the standpoint of an individual ego,see J.A.Barnes,"Networks and Political Process,"in Marc J.Swartz,ed.,Local-Level Politics: Complex faction Social and Culral Perspectives (Chicago,1968),pp.107-30;and Adrian C.Mayer,"The Significance of Quasi-Groups in the Study of Complex Societies,"in Michael Banton,ed., The Social Anthropology of Complex Societies (London,1966),pp.97-122. 15.It seems unnecessary to specify an exact size boundary between factions and machines since the difference between the two is so large.The difference,of course,is not just one of size;as a consequence of their different sizes and different degrees of selectivity in recruit- ment,as well as of the different natures of their respective arenas,machines and factions behave in thoroughly distinguishable ways. 16.This conception of a faction is similar to that offered by Ralph Nicholas,"Factions: a Comparative Analysis,"in Michael Banton,ed.Political Systemsd the Distribution of Power (London,1965),pp.27-29,and to Lande's concept of the"dyadic following"in his "Networks and Groups."Let me stress that I have defined"faction"in a technical sense.By faction I do not mean an "organized opinion group"(cf.Franz Schurmann,Ideology and Organization in Commist Chine [Berkeley,Calif.,1966],p.56),contending warlords,or Red Guards.Nor should the word faction as used here be regarded as a translation of the Chinese terms p'ai,hsi,tang,ori.Whether any of these things can be called a faction by Simple factions and support structures the present definition can only be determined upon close structural analysis.Although restrictive,the definition advanced here seems to fit a wide range of configurations found in political systems and subsystems,including governments,parties,bureaucracies,parlia- mentscourts,and villages in a number of different geographical areas and historical periods. Some examples are cited in Andrew James Nathan,"Factionalism in Early Republican China:The Politics of the Peking Government"(Ph.d.diss.,Harvard University,1970), pp.372-85. 17.Each structural characteristic discussed below is not necessarily unique to factions (for example,guerrilla bands may be equally fexible,and for some of the same reasons). but none of them is universal and the combination of characteristics is distinctive