The apparent contradiction between China's rapid economic reforms and political authoritarianism is much debated by scholars of comparative political economy. This is the first examination of this issue through the impact of a series of administrative reforms intended to promote government transparency and increase public participation in China.

An innovative framework for advancing human rights Human rights are among our most pressing issues today, yet rights promoters have reached an impasse in their effort to achieve rights for all. Human Rights for Pragmatists explains why: activists prioritize universal legal and moral norms, backed by the public shaming of violators, but in fact rights prevail only when they serve the interests of powerful local constituencies. Jack Snyder demonstrates that where local power and politics lead, rights follow. He presents an innovative roadmap for addressing a broad agenda of human rights concerns: impunity for atrocities, dilemmas of free speech in the age of social media, entrenched abuses of women’s rights, and more. Exploring the historical development of human rights around the globe, Snyder shows that liberal rights–based states have experienced a competitive edge over authoritarian regimes in the modern era. He focuses on the role of power, the interests of individuals and the groups they form, and the dynamics of bargaining and coalitions among those groups. The path to human rights entails transitioning from a social order grounded in patronage and favoritism to one dedicated to equal treatment under impersonal rules. Rights flourish when they benefit dominant local actors with the clout to persuade ambivalent peers. Activists, policymakers, and others attempting to advance rights should embrace a tailored strategy, one that acknowledges local power structures and cultural practices. Constructively turning the mainstream framework of human rights advocacy on its head, Human Rights for Pragmatists offers tangible steps that all advocates can take to move the rights project forward.

In a complex political and environmental global landscape, it has never been more critical for global organizations to understand the past, present, and future of Chinese corporate governance: this book is the key. Leveraging her dual-cultural background and using a board-level practitioner’s lens, Lyndsey Zhang offers insights that will help the global business community better understand Chinese companies’ corporate governance practices and economic development journeys, shorten the learning curve for global business leaders and investors, and explore different economic models that better suit emerging markets. She addresses important questions such as: • How does the Chinese government manage to retain its controlling position in Chinese companies while still making them attractive to global investors? • What are the drivers for Chinese companies’ future corporate governance improvement? • What is China’s position on the worldwide ESG and climate change movements? • How can global practitioners feel less like "navigating in the dark" when working with Chinese companies? This book will be an invaluable resource for anyone seeking to understand the rapidly changing world of Chinese corporate governance, including global investors, senior executives in multinational corporations, consultants, financial and political policymakers, business and law students, and researchers.

China’s economic and military rise dominates discussions of the world’s most populous country. Resilient authoritarian government is credited with great successes, but this book expands the discourse to include governance by village heads - who often ignored central politicians. Chinese reforms for prosperity started circa 1970 under rural and suburban leaders. They could act autonomously then because of unexpected political and technological opportunities. Their localization of power eroded socialist controls. Since 1990, central leaders have tried to reverse reforms made by resilient local bosses. New findings, especially from the Yangzi delta around Shanghai, challenge the top-down approach to thinking about governance. As Deng Xiaoping admitted, the nation’s spurt of prosperity began in local communities rather than Beijing. Reforms for triple-cropping and rural industrialization started long before Mao’s death (not in 1978, the date most writers cite). Country factories competed with state industries for materials and markets. Shortages by the 1980s led to inflation, government deficits, unofficial credit, unenforceable planning, illegal migrations, then international exports - and severe political tensions. After 1990, Party leaders sought policies to build a Leninist regime that is mostly post-socialist. These reactionary changes have lasted into the era of Xi Jinping. China’s reforms and subsequent changes can be understood as results of unintended situations not just ideas, and local not just central politics. This book will interest students and scholars of Chinese, as well as any readers who wonder about comparative development.

Susan L. Shirk combines decades of research, analysis, and first-hand anecdotes to illuminate China's evolving role on the world's stage and the deterioration of relations with the United States. Shirk opens the 'black box' of China's political system, revealing what lies behind China's aim to expand soft and hard power abroad, and how the United States might respond.

The ebook edition of this title is Open Access and freely available to read online. Revealing the globalization, homogenization and variation that have come to characterize the collegiate system, this volume considers the future of the higher education system, and how we can consciously shape it moving forward.

Richardson et al.’s respected and seminal Policy Styles in Western Europe (1982) shed valuable light on how countries tend to establish long-term and distinctive ways to make policies that transcend short-term imperatives and issues. This follow-up volume updates those arguments and significantly expands the coverage, consisting of 16 carefully selected country-level case studies from around the world. Furthermore, it includes different types of political regimes and developmental levels to test more widely the robustness of the patterns and variables highlighted in the original book. The case studies – covering countries from the United States, Canada, Germany and the UK to Russia, Togo and Vietnam – follow a uniform structure, combining theoretical considerations and the presentation of empirical material to reveal how the distinct cultural and institutional features of modern states continue to have implications for the making and implementation of public policy decisions within them. The book is essential reading for students and scholars of public policy, public administration, comparative politics and development studies.

This book takes a fresh look at Chinese political economy at a key inflection point. Facing a more competitive international environment, Chinese reform has shifted from its earlier focus on economic liberalization and political decentralization to a more tightly organized, centralized form of state socialism. The Party-state's vigorous fiscal reaction to the Global Financial Crisis (2008-2009) left the country with a much improved infrastructure and greater sense of national self-assurance. The more monocratic central leadership has redoubled efforts to fight poverty and pollution, push technological innovation, and at the same time rigorously enforce ideological consensus, political loyalty and anticorruption.This has been occurring in an international context of slowing trade and nationalist pushback against 'globalization', prominently including bilateral Chinese-American polarization. While China has been among the staunchest advocates and beneficiaries of globalization, incipient trade war 'decoupling' has spurred movement toward economic and technological self-reliance. Turning inward however vies with a rival impulse toward more vigorous engagement in the world. This is most consequentially represented by the Belt and Road Initiative, driving massive infrastructure construction through Central Asia and the South and Southeast Asian maritime periphery. Despite slowing growth and a large debt overhang, swift recovery from the Covid-19 epidemic leaves China in a relatively strong economic position.

Retrofitting Leninism explains, through the lens of China, how open governance and modern information technology come together to sustain a tightly controlled but socially responsive system of authoritarianism. When closed authoritarian regimes reform and open up, they often fail, most eventually breakdown. The People's Republic of China stands as a notable exception. How has the ruling Chinese Communist Party maintained power throughout decades of reform and rapid development? Drawing inspiration from the CCP's Leninist origins, Dimitar Gueorguiev offers a novel and empirically grounded explanation. The key to the CCP's staying power, he argues, is its ability to integrate authoritarian control with social inclusion - a combination that is being facilitated by modern telecommunications technology. Relying on statistical data, media reports, and a series of original opinion polls, Gueorguiev explores how public input feeds into political oversight and policy planning. To unpack how public preferences are acquired, processed, and prioritized, he analyses bottom-up representation and coordination in local Chinese legislatures. Finally, to evaluate the impact of inclusion, he shows that public engagement contributes to both policy stability and public satisfaction. Although public inclusion is instrumental to the CCP's hold on power, Gueorguiev underscores that "inclusive authoritarianism" greatly depends on the voluntary participation of Chinese citizens, which is far from guaranteed. A trenchant exploration of the Leninist model today, Retrofitting Leninism will reshape our understanding of the authoritarian approach to government and its prospects for the future.

How democracies compete with autocracies to bias international order in their favor--and why democracies are losing "Owen makes a powerful case that the fate of American democracy hinges on the health and welfare of other democracies."--Foreign Affairs It is well known, and much discussed, that liberal democracy is in trouble worldwide. Much of this discussion focuses on conditions within individual countries: their inequalities of wealth, political polarization, media environments, and dominant ideologies. In this book, John M. Owen IV sees the failures of democracy as failures of "ecosystem engineering." Like beavers, nesting ants, or (most intensely of all) humans, nations actively reshape their environments to make them more favorable for their own species--this, for Owen, is the true meaning of Woodrow Wilson's phrase "to make the world safe for democracy." However, liberalism has evolved in ways that are no longer conducive to its own survival; meanwhile, autocratic governments in Russia and China are actively reshaping the international environment to favor autocracy. Owen argues that the way to ensure democracy's survival in the United States is to reimagine liberalism--to view it as less about disruption and perpetual openness and more about commitment, community, and country. Liberalism must reject the "great delusion" that it can defeat autocracies everywhere and convert them into liberal democracies, yet also counter moves by China and Russia to make the world safe for autocracy.