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Of all the world’s governments, China’s probably employs the fewest obfuscatory mechanisms. It doesn’t have multiparty elections. It doesn’t pretend its propaganda outlets are ‘free and independent’. It’s open about censorship. It openly has party cells in its businesses.
Obviously Maoist China employed obfuscatory mechanisms - the Cultural Revolution was a gigantic ‘grassroots movement’ manipulated from the top - but they’ve become increasingly formalist (although Xi’s corruption campaign was partly obfuscatory).
Where does North Korea lie on the obfuscatory vs formalist spectrum? Are cults of personality obfuscatory? Is Soviet-style economic planning obfuscatory?
How do you tell the difference between an obfuscatory mechanism designed to conceal how power functions and plain old bad ideas and/or incompetence?
