Local Governance and Accountability in China – Dan Mattingly

04/04/19 • 66 min

How do autocratic regimes secure political obedience, and implement unpopular policies, without always resorting to outright coercive tactics? In a provocative new book, Yale University political scientist Dan Mattingly argues that, in China, state power exercised through local governments relies on local civil society groups—like temple organizations or lineage associations—to quietly infiltrate, observe, and thereby control Chinese rural society. In this episode, he discusses his book and its core arguments about “soft” authoritarian repression with Neysun Mahboubi, in a conversation which extends to the basic nature of local governance in China and the various mechanisms by which it may (or may not) be held to account. The episode was recorded on April 12, 2018.

Dan Mattingly is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale University. His research focuses on the political economy of development, authoritarian rule, and Chinese politics. His new book on “The Art of Political Control in China” is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press, and his articles have previously appeared in Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, World Development, and World Politics. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley and was later a postdoctoral fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. You can follow him on Twitter @mattinglee.

Music credit: "Salt" by Poppy Ackroyd, follow her at http://poppyackroyd.com

Special thanks to Nick Marziani and Kaiser Kuo

Music credit: "Salt" by Poppy Ackroyd, follow her at http://poppyackroyd.com

Special thanks to Nick Marziani and Kaiser Kuo

Previous Episode

Property Rights and Economic Development in China – Susan Whiting

At least since China’s 1994 fiscal and tax reforms, land-backed development has served as the greatest source of revenue for Chinese local governments—potentially almost 1 trillion US dollars in total this year—as well as a powerful engine both for rapid industrialization and for social discontent. This circumstance reflects how the state allocation of land-use rights, in China, remains a vestige of the planned economy, and how fiscal pressures on local governments, combined with differential pricing of land for purposes of takings compensation versus resale to developers, incentivize what often looks to be predatory behavior. In this episode, Neysun Mahboubi discusses China’s property rights regime, especially pertaining to land in rural areas, and how it informs the influential theory that economic growth requires stable property rights, with University of Washington political scientist Susan Whiting, a prominent scholar of China’s political economy of development. The episode was recorded on March 16, 2018.

Susan Whiting is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Washington, in Seattle, where she also holds appointments in the Jackson School of International Studies and the School of Law. Her first book, Power and Wealth in Rural China: The Political Economy of Institutional Change, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2001. She has published articles and chapters on authoritarianism, “rule of law,” property rights, fiscal reform, and rural development in volumes and journals such as Comparative Political Studies and The China Quarterly. She has contributed to studies of governance, fiscal reform, and non-governmental organizations under the auspices of the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the Ford Foundation, respectively. Her current research focuses upon property rights in land, the role of law in authoritarian regimes, as well as the politics of fiscal reform.

Music credit: "Salt" by Poppy Ackroyd, follow her at http://poppyackroyd.com

Special thanks to Nick Marziani and Kaiser Kuo

Next Episode

Diagnosing China's State-led Capitalism – Yasheng Huang

As Chinese economic growth slows to its lowest rate in 30 years, there is rising concern (including among some Chinese scholars and officials) about the long-term viability of China's distinctive form of state-led capitalism, sometimes characterized in terms of a "China Model". Nevertheless, the Chinese government still appears committed to the approach marked by heavy state intervention in the economy that has driven China's growth since the 1990s, and especially since the global financial crisis of 2008 and then under President Xi Jinping. In this episode, Neysun Mahboubi discusses China's state-led capitalism, and the prospects for reform, with one of the foremost scholars of China's economic development, MIT political scientist Yasheng Huang, whose pathbreaking work has highlighted the contributions of private entrepreneurship to China's "economic miracle" in the 1980s, and the various costs levied by the shift away from that approach. The episode was recorded on April 27, 2018.

Yasheng Huang is Epoch Foundation Professor of International Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management, where he also serves as faculty director of action learning, and runs both China Lab and India Lab, which have provided low-cost consulting services to over 360 small and medium enterprises in those countries. He has published widely in both English and Chinese, and his book Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics: Entrepreneurship and the State (Cambridge University Press), based on detailed archival and quantitative evidence spanning three decades of Chinese economic reform, was selected by The Economist as a best book of 2008. His current research projects include a new book on "The Nature of the Chinese State", collaboration with researchers at Tsinghua University to create a complete database of technological innovation in China, and serving as co-PI for a Walmart Foundation supported study of food safety in China. He is or has been a fellow at the Center for China in the World Economy at Tsinghua University; a research fellow at the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics; a fellow at the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan; and a World Economic Forum Fellow. He also has served as a consultant to the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the OECD, and on a number of advisory and corporate boards of non-profit and for-profit organizations.

Sound engineering: Shani Aviram and Neysun Mahboubi

Music credit: "Salt" by Poppy Ackroyd, follow her at http://poppyackroyd.com