Late Qing parliamentarism and the borderlands of the Qing Empire—Mongolia, Tibet, and Xinjiang (1906–1911)

The article examines the relationship between the late Qing constitutional movement of 1905–1911 and the vast borderland regions of the Qing Empire–that is, Mongolia, Tibet, and Xinjiang. It traces how intellectuals and officials concerned with devising constitutional policies foresaw the integration of these regions into the nascent parliamentary institutions at the provincial and central levels. The article argues that the status of the borderlands played a significant role in late Qing constitutional debates, and that debates on borderland constitutionalism were a phenomenon of a wider constitutional wave affecting Eurasia in the 1900s. Chinese intellectuals and officials felt the competition of the emerging parliamentary institutions in Russia and the Ottoman Empire, and anticipating that constitutional and parliamentarist movements among Mongols, Tibetans, and Turki could lead to the separation of the respective regions, they hoped that parliamentary representation, albeit limited, would be an instrument against centrifugal tendencies on the borders. Hence, they called for constitutional reforms in China and for the inclusion of the borderland populations into the new parliamentary institutions. Yet, arguing with the sparse population of the borderlands as well as with their alleged economic and cultural backwardness, they denied the direct application of the constitutional plan to these territories. The differentiated policies eventually applied to the borderlands were a lackluster compromise between these conflicting interests

China and the Political Upheavals in Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and Persia: Non-Western Influences on Constitutional Thinking in Late Imperial China, 1893-1911

Research about Sino-foreign cultural interactions during the last decades of the Qing Empire pays much attention to the extremely dense and complex relations between Japan and China. Against this backdrop, historians have tended to neglect that the Chinese “constitutional preparation” of the years 1905-06 was concomitant to the promulgation of constitutional documents in other thitherto absolutist countries such as Russia, the Ottoman Empire and Persia. This paper shows that, during the whole period of “constitutional preparation”, the Qing government, media and intellectuals remained well aware of these events

The 22 Frimaire of Yuan Shikai: Privy councils in the constitutional architectures of Japan and China, 1887–1917

Privy councils are among the most traditional, yet least conspicuous forms of collective decision-making in modern states. However, using the example of East Asia, this chapter shows that, far from being a moribund relic of the pre-constitutional past, advisory councils to the head of state were a highly productive global element of constitution-building which was variously adapted according to local needs and conditions. The architecture of the Napoleonic Constitution of 22 Frimaire, which complemented the executive ministers of state with an additional Council of State and came to be underpinned by the idea of a “neutral” or “moderating” branch of government, promised attractive advantages to the makers of East Asia’s first modern constitutions. The Japanese Privy Council (Sūmitsuin) alleviated the dangers of putting too much power into the hands of the Emperor, while also securing the power of the ruling oligarchy in a context of mistrust of the legislative branch. The Sūmitsuin served as a model for both the Qing Empire and the Republic of China, although the political objectives attached to the respective advisory councils diverged significantly. Eventually, both in Japan and in China, the institution was abolished when it had become too closely connected with authoritarian politics

Parliamentary options for a multi-ethnic state: sovereignty, frontier governance, and representation in early twentieth-century China

This article reconstructs two modes of parliamentary representation of (post-)imperial diversity in early twentieth-century China. One model foresaw a differentiated representation of the borderlands in the nascent parliamentary institutions, using upper house seats to garner loyalty from the nobility at the same time as it denied electoral participation. The second model stipulated electoral equality between the borderland regions and the inner provinces. While the first model parliamentarized imperial forms of governance, it was also informed by and partially conformed to global models of governance. The second was informed by notions of undivided national sovereignty. In the late Qing Empire, the government decided against the second model, for it was deemed to presuppose a degree of national integration not given in the Empire. The challenges posed by the proclamation of the Republic of China, in particular the declarations of independence of Mongolia and Tibet, led to a strong emphasis on the newly-founded state’s unity and the swift adoption of the second model. This choice, however, was neither uncontested nor was its implementation complete

Creating a Constitutional Absolute Monarchy: Li Jiaju, Dashou, and Late Qing Interpretations of the Japanese Parliament

This paper explores interpretations of the Japanese parliament by governmental actors in the Qing empire, most importantly the commissioners for constitutional research Li Jiaju 李家駒 (1871–1938) and Dashou 達壽 (1870–1939). It shows that, within a theoretical framework formed in dialogue with their Japanese constitutionalist colleagues, these actors came to understand the Japanese parliament as an organ possessing tightly limited attributions gifted by the emperor. They maintained that the constitutional system should not be parliamentary, although the parliament was one of its necessary elements. Rather, it should be based on an imperially authorised constitutional document and a form of government centred on the figure of the emperor, in which the parliament would play a consultative rather than legislative role. Ultimately, the article shows that, within a Eurasia-wide wave of imperial transformation in which officials envisioned parliaments mainly as organs designed to increase governmental efficiency, political actors like Li Jiaju and Dashou creatively adapted categories of political science to their own political needs

Introduction: Parties from Vanguards to Governments

Over the course of the twentieth century, a broad array of parties as organizations of a new type took over state functions and replaced state institutions on the territories of the former Ottoman, Qing, Russian, and Habsburg Empires. In the context of roughly simultaneous imperial and postimperial transformations, organizations such as the Committee for Union and Progress (CUP) in the Ottoman Empire (one-party regime since 1913), the Anfu Club in China (parliamentary majority since 1918), and the Bolshevik Party in Russia (in control of parts of the former empire since 1918), not only took over government power but merged with government itself. Disillusioned with the outcomes of previous constitutional and parliamentary reforms, these parties justified their takeovers with slogans and programs of controlled or supervised economic and social development. Inheriting the previous imperial diversities, they furthermore took over the role of mediators between the various social and ethnic groups inhabiting the respective territories. In this respect, the parties appropriated some of the functions which dynastic and then constitutional and parliamentary regimes had ostensibly failed to perform. In a significant counter-example, in spite of prominent aspirations, no one-party regime emerged in Japan, for there the constitutional monarchy had survived the empire's transformation to a major industrialized imperialist power. One-party regimes thrived on both sides of the Cold War and in some of the non-aligned states. Whereas several state socialist one-party regimes collapsed in 1989–1991, some of the communist parties have continued to rule, and new parties managed to monopolize political power in different Eurasian contexts

Montesquieu vs. Bagehot: Two visions of parliamentarism in Japan

This chapter focuses on the Tokugawa-Meiji transition period in the Japanese archipelago. It discusses the question of the perceived poor prospects for the transplantation of a "parliament" onto Japanese soil. The Japanese system itself, on which the new parliament was premised, hovered between a centralized unitary state and an extremely decentralized federal state (at the time, the controversy was conceptualized by means of the Confucian terms hōken 封建 and gunken 郡県). This polarization of the image of the existing Japanese system as the basis of the new parliament naturally produced a polarization of the image of the congress as well, namely between the decentralized “Montesquieu Model” and the centralized “Bagehot Model.” I want to show that the story of modern Japanese parliamentarism was never a monolithic success story, but rather a drama of conflicts that was open to different possibilities

Parties as Governments in Eurasia, 1913–1991: Nationalism, Socialism, and Development

This book examines the political parties which emerged in the former Ottoman, Qing, Russian, and Habsburg empires and not only took over government power, but merged with government itself. It discusses how these parties, disillusioned with previous constitutional and parliamentary reforms, justified their takeovers with programs of controlled or supervised economic and social development, including acting as the mediators between the various social and ethnic groups in the respective territories. It pays special attention to nation-building through the party, to institutions (both constitutional and de facto), and to the global and comparative aspects of one-party regimes. It explores the origins of one-party regimes in China, Czechoslovakia, Korea, the Soviet Union, Turkey, Yugoslavia, and beyond, the roles of socialism and nationalism in the parties’ approaches to development and state-building, as well the pedagogical aspirations of the ruling elites. Hence, by revisiting the dynamics of the transition from the earlier imperial formations via constitutionalism to one-party governments, and by assessing the internal and external dynamics of one-party regimes after their establishment, the book more precisely locates this type of regime within the contemporary world’s political landscape. Moreover, it emphasises that one-party regimes thrived on both sides of the Cold War and in some of the non-aligned states, and that although some state socialist one-party regimes collapsed in 1989–1991, in other places historically dominant parties and new parties have continued to monopolize political power

Introduction

Parliaments are often seen as institutions peculiar to the Euro-American world. In contrast, their establishment elsewhere is frequently thought of as a derivative and mostly defective process. Such simplistic tales of unilateral and imperfect transfers of knowledge have led to a suboptimal understanding of non-Western experiences, as well as of their contribution to the shaping of the global political landscape of the modern world. The present volume challenges Eurocentric visions by retracing the evolution of modern institutions of collective decision-making in Eurasia, more specifically in the Russian/Soviet, Qing/Chinese, Japanese, and Ottoman/Turkish cases. It argues that, over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, intellectuals and political actors across Eurasia used indigenous as well as foreign elements to shape their versions of parliamentary institutions for their own political purposes. It was through the creative agency of these often understudied actors that representative institutions have acquired a wide range of meanings throughout Eurasia and become a near-ubiquitous element of modern statehood