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This book presents a uniquely dynamic and fluid model of political evolution in the world's largest and most powerful authoritarian regime.
List of contents
Introduction: beyond implicit political dichotomies and linear models of change in China Vivienne Shue and Patricia M. Thornton; Part I. Leadership Practices: 1. Cultural governance in contemporary China: 're-orienting' party propaganda Elizabeth J. Perry; 2. China's core executive in economic policy: pursuing national agendas in a fragmented polity Sebastian Heilmann; 3. Maps, dreams, and the trails to heaven: envisioning a future Chinese nation-space Vivienne Shue; Part II. People's Government: 4. 'Mass supervision' and the bureaucratization of governance in China Joel Andreas and Yige Dong; 5. Shared fictions and informal politics in China Robert P. Weller; Part III. Expedients of the Local State: Bargains and Deals: 6. Seeing like a grassroots state: producing power and instability in China's bargained authoritarianism Ching Kwan Lee and Yong Hong Zhang; 7. Finding China's urban: bargained land conversions, local assemblages, and fragmented urbanization Luigi Tomba; Part IV. Governance of the Individual and Techniques of the Self: 8. Governing from the middle? Understanding the making of China's middle classes Jean-Louis Rocca; 9. A new urban underclass? Making and managing 'vulnerable groups' in contemporary China Patricia M. Thornton; 10. The policy innovation imperative: changing techniques for governing China's local governors Christian Göbel and Thomas Heberer.
About the author
Vivienne Shue, F.B.A., was educated at Vassar College, New York, the University of Oxford and Harvard University, Massachusetts, in the 1960s and 1970s. Among the earliest American scholars to conduct fieldwork in rural China, she taught Chinese politics for more than twenty-five years at Yale University, Connecticut and Cornell University, New York, becoming best known for her publications on local-level government, political economy, and state-society relations. In 2002, as a Professor and Fellow of St Antony's College, she returned to Oxford to direct its Contemporary China Studies Programme. She is an Associate of the University of Oxford's China Centre.Patricia M. Thornton is an associate professor at the University of Oxford whose research interests span the political, socio-economic, and cultural history of modern China. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley, and went on to an An Wang Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at Harvard University, Massachusetts. Also a tutor in the politics of China at Merton College, Oxford, she has lectured on the politics of China at the University of Oxford's Department of Politics and International Relations, and at the Oxford University China Centre, since 2008.
Summary
This thought-provoking reappraisal of China's political system and its inner workings combines cutting-edge research by an international, inter-disciplinary panel of senior specialists with a penetrating critique of the currently reigning 'authoritarian resilience' paradigm. To Govern China proposes a fresh general approach to studies of political change in non-democratic settings.
