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Scholars of European history assert that war makes states, just as states make war. This study finds that in China, the challenges of governing produced a trajectory of state-building in which the processes of moral and social control were at least as central to state-making as the exercise of coercive power.
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 opposed to practices. The prevailing analytical focus on adaptive and resilient authoritarianism - a neo-institutionalist concept - fails to capture what are often cross-cutting currents in ongoing processes of political change. Illuminating a vibrant repertoire of power practices employed in governing China today, these authors advance instead a more fluid, open-ended conceptual approach that privileges nimbleness, mutability, and receptivity to institutional and procedural invention and evolution.
Institutional logics, the underlying governing principles of societal sectors, strongly influence organizational decision making. Any shift in institutional logics results in a similar shift in attention to alternative problems and solutions and in new determinants for executive decisions. Examining changes in institutional logics in higher-education publishing, this book links cultural analysis with organizational decision making to develop a theory of attention and explain how executives concentrate on certain market characteristics to the exclusion of others. Analyzing both qualitative and quantitative data from the 1950s to the 1990s, the author shows how higher education publishing moved from a culture of independent domestic publishers focused on creating markets for books based on personal, relational networks to a culture of international conglomerates that create markets from corporate hierarchies. This book offers broader lessons beyond publishing--its theory is applicable to explaining institutional changes in organizational leadership, strategy, and structure occurring in all professional services industries.
Case studies and theoretical essays introduce the basic principles necessary to identify and explain the symbols and practices each unique human group holds sacred or inalienable. The authors apply the methods of political science, social psychology, anthropology, journalism, and educational research. They build on the insights of Gordon Allport, Charles Taylor, and Max Weber to describe and analyze the patterns of behavior that social groups worldwide use to maintain their identities.
Afterlives of Chinese Communism comprises essays from over fifty world- renowned scholars in the China field, from various disciplines and continents. It provides an indispensable guide for understanding how the Mao era continues to shape Chinese politics today. Each chapter discusses a concept or practice from the Mao period, what it attempted to do, and what has become of it since. The authors respond to the legacy of Maoism from numerous perspectives to consider what lessons Chinese communism can offer today, and whether there is a future for the egalitarian politics that it once promised.
China's convulsive Cultural Revolution was conceived in 1966 as a 'great revolution that would touch the people to their very souls'. How are we to assess its impact fifty years on? In this volume, leading social and political scientists, historians and anthropologists examine the long-lasting consequences of the political, social, economic and cultural upheaval unleashed by Mao Zedong. Contributions from authors working within and outside the People's Republic of China consider the impact of this tumultuous mass movement from perspectives as diverse as market-based economic reform, clothing and fashion, the grassroots movements of late 1960s across the globe and the so-called 'lost generation' of sent-down youth. We find that collective and personal memories of the Cultural Revolution and its enduring institutional and social legacies continue to exert a profound effect on China and the Chinese people today.
The book analyzes, synthesizes, and further develops theoretical and methodological tools in the rising new school in institutional analysis, the institutional logics perspective, which offers opportunities to examine how individual and organizational actors are a product of multiple social locations in an inter-institutional system.
Exploring the activities of the Chinese Communist Party's rank and file membership base, Koss advances our understanding of authoritarian parties.
An ambitious comparative study of regime consolidation in the 'revolutionary' People's Republic of China and 'conservative' Taiwan in the early 1950s.
"Observers have been predicting the demise of China’s political system since Mao Zedong’s death over thirty years ago. The Chinese Communist state, however, seems to have become increasingly adept at responding to challenges ranging from leadership succession and popular unrest to administrative reorganization, legal institutionalization, and global economic integration. What political techniques and procedures have Chinese policymakers employed to manage the unsettling impact of the fastest sustained economic expansion in world history? As the authors of these essays demonstrate, China’s political system allows for more diverse and flexible input than would be predicted from its forma...