Agrarian policy trends from 1956 to 1983 emerged from a legitimation process amplified by both the revolutionary background and factional politics of the People’s Republic of China. However, the process is not clear-cut but is characterized by an interweaving of various factors, specifically, factional politics, legitimacy, and the results and thrusts of agrarian policies. Thus, this paper asks the question, “what are the dimensions of policy legitimation that framed the publicized struggle of competing elites for policy content and consistency?” To shed light on this issue, this paper would make more specific inquiries on the nature of the relationship between publicized factional elite competition at the national level and the struggle for policy consistency via policy legitimation. This study’s primary theoretical objective is to develop a bridge between the literatures on elite competition and regime legitimacy through a processual analysis of policy legitimation. Hence, this study’s primary objective is not to establish causality but to illustrate that it is in policy legitimation that elite competition collides with public sentiments emanating from the impact of objective conditions.
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