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This book challenges the common perception or assumption that greater state intervention and re-centralization will result in convergence towards a more equitable and inclusive growth model in China. Instead of asking whether local agency matters, this project examines the conditions and latitude of local agency under initial decentralization followed by increasing top-down re-centralization. The central argument is that in response to common policy directives and pressures from above, disparities in local growth strategies have interacted with political institutions in generating "embedded" sub-national welfare mix models, with varying articulations of state, market, community, and family in Chinese welfare production. The bottom-up feedback effects from these embedded models have somewhat offset growing top-down pressure for re-centralization, contributing to persistent sub-national variations. This author contributes to a growing literature of comparative political economythat seeks to examine the political and economic logics of social policy in non-western and authoritarian political systems.
List of contents
Chapter 1. Social Policy Reform and Local Agency in China.- Chapter 2. Authoritarian State, Growth Strategies, and Subnational Welfare Politics.- Chapter 3. The Pro-Growth National Reforms: State-led Commodification before 2000s.- Chapter 4. The Return of the State? The New Reforms and Changing Local Agency.- Chapter 5. Local Agency in Healthcare: Limits of Fragmented Universalism.- Chapter 6. Local Agency in Affordable Housing: Asset-Based Welfare or Public Rental?- Chapter 7. Local Agency in Old-Age Care: Articulating State, Society and Family.- Chapter 8. State Responsibility or Societal Participation? The Future of Authoritarian Social Policies.
About the author
Xiaoye She is Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science at California State University San Marcos, USA.
