Political Opportunity and Rational Choice

From the perspective of individuals weighing a decision to participate in collective actions, the most important factor is the political opportunity structure—the limits of possible costs, the risks of participation, and the expectation of success. The political opportunity structure in urban China is the prime obstacle that hinders the rise of urban collective action and its duration.

One of the legacies of the 1989 Beijing student movement is the government’s use of laws to limit people’s rights to organize public demonstrations. Regulations maintain that rallies or protests of more than three persons require prior permission from local public security bureaus, which almost always deny applications, thus severely limiting the legal and routine channel of interest expression and grievance release. Public demonstrations or protests that erupt without permission will be defined as illegal activities, resulting in arrest and detainment for the organizers. Thus, except for demonstrations encouraged by the authorities such as the student protests responding to NATO’s bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, almost all other types of urban collective behaviors will be labeled illegal. This makes the organization of and participation in such collective actions a highly risky endeavor, deterring potential leaders and supporters.

The key question, therefore, is if the unfavorable political opportunity structure really stops all potential urban collective behaviors, especially socially disruptive ones. The answer should be “not necessarily,” because despite these high costs of participating in a collective movement, there significant benefits remain that may outweigh the dangers of potential arrests, detentions, trials, and punishments.

Ultimately, there are four possible results from individuals balancing these costs and benefits. First, if individuals expect few or no benefits and the level of grievance remains the same, rational actors will choose not to participate. Second, the grievance level may be increasing, galvanizing public action despite the high level of risk and uncertain benefits. For example, arrests of protest leaders may mobilize even more community members to participate.

A third alternative scenario is if, weighing the expected costs and benefits, rational actors do in fact choose to participate. In this case, the leaders and activists pay the costs associated with collective action, but it is the other members of the aggrieved group who share the benefits in the event that government authority is forced to make concessions to restore the social order threatened by disruptive tactics employed by the activists. Indeed, this points to a fourth scenario. Chinese society, people have long held to the proto-typical idea that the law cannot punish a large number of people committing the same illegal behavior. Thus even without any expected achievements or benefits, the prospect of no costs in the event of a sufficiently large movement will still lead people to choose participation, because there are no alternative channels of interest expression and grievance release.