Chinas stunning record of economic development since the 1970s has been marred by an increasingly obvious gap between the countrys haves and its have-nots. While people living in some parts of the country have enjoyed dramatically improved conditions of life, those in other districts and regions have slipped ever further behind in terms of access to health, wealth, education, security and opportunity.

Paying for Progress in China is a collection of essays which trace the causes of this growing inequality, using new data including surveys, interviews, newly available official statistics and...

This is a collection of scholarly essays on state, society and politics in the Third World, with cases drawn from Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America. The introductory chapter outlines the theoretical approach of the contributors and the concluding chapter summarizes the importance of their studies and the contribution of the volume to general theory in comparative politics. The book is relevant to the growing state theory literature in the social sciences and it puts forward a state-in-society approach to the study of political development.

These four conceptual and critical essays on state and society in contemporary China argue vigorously against the grain of prevailing scholarly interpretation. In substantive content, they explore two major themes from different historical and theoretical points of departure. First, the author argues that the party/state under Mao fell far short of the full control over China's peasant society that outside observers often assumed it had achieved. She shows, instead, how the Maoist state frequently pursued policies that in fact had the ironic effect of strengthening the resistance of rural...

This is a study of the organization and operations of Chinese government at the county level. Highlighting the contention-prone yet often collaborative relationships between county officials, and the production units and administration above and below them, the authors open a window on the Chinese state and statecraft in the vast bureaucratic middle ground between Beijing policymaking and community-level politics. Using data drawn from Shulu County, Hebei, over the last decade of the Mao era and the first decade of the Deng period, supplemented by fieldwork carried out between 1979 and 1990,...

How, practically speaking, is the Chinese polity - as immense and fissured as it has now become - actually being governed today? Some analysts highlight signs of 'progress' in the direction of more liberal, open, and responsive rule. Others dwell instead on the many remaining 'obstacles' to a hoped-for democratic transition. Drawing together cutting-edge research from an international panel of experts, this volume argues that both those approaches rest upon too starkly drawn distinctions between democratic and non-democratic 'regime types', and concentrate too narrowly on institutions as...

This book presents a uniquely dynamic and fluid model of political evolution in the world's largest and most powerful authoritarian regime.