Conditional Autonomy, Discursive Gatekeeping, and Patterns of Action: How Experts Influence Policy in China's One‐Party System

本文探讨了专家如何在中国一党制体系内发挥影响，该体系的政策制定既受意识形态规约，又具有高度的知识密集型特征。本文结合了“能动性功能理论”(该理论识别了包括知识积累、中介协调、创业行为和领导作用在内的行动模式)与四类专家形态的分类法—即“近权力型”、“学术型”、“市场导向型”和“社会型”专家—以此解释它们在制度嵌入程度和资源基础上的差异。本文指出，这些专家形态是在“有条件的自主性”下运作的；专家影响力的实现，取决于其行动是否与 党和国家主导的话语、时间及制度秩序相契合。“话语把关”机制决定了在特定政治条件下，何种形式的专家能动性是可行的并能产生实质影响。本文以备受关注的上海曹杨新村更新项目为例阐述了这一论点；在该规划案例中，话语建构、安全稳定底线以及政治时机等因素共同激活并制约了专家的角色发挥。“近权力型”专家主要承担领导和官僚体系内部的协调职能；“学术型”专家则侧重于中介协调，并有选择地开展创业活动；“市场导向型”专家致力于推动创业与项目层面的领导工作；而“社会型”专家则从事中介协调与集体领导，在默许的边界内开展微观层面的创业尝试。本文的贡献在于揭示了政治控制并非单纯压制专业知识，而是对专家能动性进行了分化与组织，使其转化为具有政策相关性的不同行动形态。

This paper examines how experts exert influence within China's one-party system, where policymaking is ideologically disciplined and knowledge-intensive. It combines the Functional Theory of Agency, which identifies patterns of action including accumulation of knowledge, brokerage, entrepreneurship, and leadership, with a typology of four expert configurations-near-power, academic, market-oriented, and Societal experts-to explain differences in institutional embeddedness and resource base. The paper argues that these configurations operate under conditions of conditional autonomy; expert influence becomes possible through alignment with the dominant discursive, temporal and institutional order of the Party-state. Discursive gatekeeping determines which forms of expert agency become feasible and consequential under specific political conditions. This argument is illustrated using Caoyang New Village renewal project in Shanghai, a high-salience planning case where discursive framing, safety and stability boundaries, and political timing activate and constrain expert roles. Near-power experts perform leadership and intra-bureau brokerage, while academic experts broker and selectively pursue entrepreneurship. Market-oriented experts advance entrepreneurship and project-level leadership, while Societal experts engage in brokerage and collective leadership, pursuing micro-entrepreneurship within tacitly tolerated boundaries. The paper's contribution is to demonstrate that political control does not merely suppress expertise but differentiates and organizes expert agency into distinct, policy-relevant forms.