State-enlisted Voluntarism in China: The Role of Public Security Volunteers in Social Stability Maintenance

Abstract This article explores how the Chinese government aims to maintain social stability by encouraging citizens to become volunteers. We propose that a new type of governance, namely, “state-enlisted voluntarism,” is being deployed in which public security volunteers are mobilized and monitored by the state. Analysis based on ten-year nationwide empirical data gathered from local areas in China suggests that the government intentionally enlists citizens into its hierarchical system to strengthen its administrative capacity and maintain a stable society without the risk of domestic threats. We find that direct enlistment approaches empower citizens as state proxies, and that indirect enlistment approaches ensure that various social stakeholders are comprehensively controlled. In general, the Chinese government has four reasons to institutionalize the state enlistment of voluntarism: to increase human resources at the grassroots; transform social organizations into subordinates; frame policy innovations as political credits; and to avoid blame. Our findings also suggest that China's party-state system mobilizes citizens into implementation-oriented activities rather than engages them in policymaking to maintain social stability at the grassroots.