| Summary/Abstract |
A strong authoritarian state such as China has a range of institutions and instruments at its disposal to resolve social conflicts. This study proposes a new mechanism—citizen’s engagement of a profit-seeking broker—that helps to facilitate state-society bargaining, resolve conflicts and thereby absorb social contention. This form of state-society bargaining is conducted via professional brokers whose objective is to make a profit from the transactions. By establishing trust between the officials and citizen, the broker brings the two parties together, enables and facilitates state-society bargaining that would not have taken place otherwise. In so doing, the broker helps to resolve conflicts or protracted stand-offs that might have spilled into street protest. These profit-seekers represent commodification of state-society bargaining by matching demands from discontented citizens with supplies of special favours by state officials. This study contributes to the growing body of conflict resolution and state repression literature in China.
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