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Remarkable Growth in Unremarkable Places : = Diversity in Local State Abilities and China's Developmental Success.

Record Type:	Language materials, manuscript : Monograph/item
Title/Author:	Remarkable Growth in Unremarkable Places :/
Reminder of title:	Diversity in Local State Abilities and China's Developmental Success.
Author:	Ge, Hongjia.
Description:	1 online resource (203 pages)
Notes:	Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 85-11, Section: A.
Contained By:	Dissertations Abstracts International85-11A.
Subject:	Sociology. -
Online resource:	click for full text (PQDT)
ISBN:	9798382761138

Remarkable Growth in Unremarkable Places : = Diversity in Local State Abilities and China's Developmental Success.
Ge, Hongjia.

Remarkable Growth in Unremarkable Places :Diversity in Local State Abilities and China's Developmental Success. - 1 online resource (203 pages)

Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 85-11, Section: A.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Northwestern University, 2024.

Includes bibliographical references

This dissertation offers an evolutionary explanation of the Chinese state's developmental performance since the 1980s. The analogy with evolution is based on the premise that state actions in a complex environment will inevitably lead to unintended consequences. Given the number of sudden changes in China's economic, social, and political environment during the reform era, no specific measures or policies can explain the state's sustained success. Observing the frequent occurrence of sudden successes by many previously unremarkable local states, I argue that the Chinese state's sustained developmental success results from its remarkable adaptivity to many sudden environmental changes. The diverse responses of local states to these changes ensure that some local states will find more effective solutions to the problem and help the state adapt to the new environment.The substantive analysis focuses on the causes of this response diversity. Drawing from my multiple rounds of fieldwork in a southeastern prefectural city between 2020 and 2022, I argue that Chinese local states are able to make diverse responses to a common problem because they have developed a diverse set of state abilities. Specifically, the executive discretion conferred on the local states through a series of decentralization reforms allows local officials to carry out a localized version of state-initiated campaigns, which I call project-campaigns. The organizational flexibility offered by this discretion permits the local states to quickly learn from their past experiences and develop more effective routines that can be incorporated into the local bureaucracy as a new state ability. Meanwhile, the structural constraints on this discretion set the basic form of these routines, making them easier to mimic by other local states while limiting their impact on the centralized political system. Moreover, the local officials' preferences are not only present when a crisis arrives; they are integral to the development of new state abilities, by making the local officials launch the project-campaigns in the first place. The complex interaction among the position of local officials in the state, the issue at hand, and the local circumstances at the time of decision-making produces sufficient variations in these preferences.Starting with this diversity in intention and with the help of an effective method to acquire new abilities, the reform era witnesses the rapid growth of local state abilities and a significant increase in the state's overall adaptability. It should be noted that due to the limited scope of discretion-driven project-campaigns, these new state abilities result predominantly from adjustments of existing bureaucratic functions and better use of state resources. Because of the dominant role of the Chinese state in society, these state abilities can and have withstand a wide variety of sudden changes and developmental challenges. However, on issues that require significant cooperation with non-state groups, such as scientific innovation and welfare negotiations, these state abilities are much less diverse. Accordingly, the state's performance in these areas will be more struggling.

Electronic reproduction.
Ann Arbor, Mich. :
ProQuest,
2024

Mode of access: World Wide Web

ISBN: 9798382761138Subjects--Topical Terms:

551705
Sociology.
Subjects--Index Terms:

AdaptivityIndex Terms--Genre/Form:

554714
Electronic books.

Remarkable Growth in Unremarkable Places : = Diversity in Local State Abilities and China's Developmental Success.
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520 $a This dissertation offers an evolutionary explanation of the Chinese state's developmental performance since the 1980s. The analogy with evolution is based on the premise that state actions in a complex environment will inevitably lead to unintended consequences. Given the number of sudden changes in China's economic, social, and political environment during the reform era, no specific measures or policies can explain the state's sustained success. Observing the frequent occurrence of sudden successes by many previously unremarkable local states, I argue that the Chinese state's sustained developmental success results from its remarkable adaptivity to many sudden environmental changes. The diverse responses of local states to these changes ensure that some local states will find more effective solutions to the problem and help the state adapt to the new environment.The substantive analysis focuses on the causes of this response diversity. Drawing from my multiple rounds of fieldwork in a southeastern prefectural city between 2020 and 2022, I argue that Chinese local states are able to make diverse responses to a common problem because they have developed a diverse set of state abilities. Specifically, the executive discretion conferred on the local states through a series of decentralization reforms allows local officials to carry out a localized version of state-initiated campaigns, which I call project-campaigns. The organizational flexibility offered by this discretion permits the local states to quickly learn from their past experiences and develop more effective routines that can be incorporated into the local bureaucracy as a new state ability. Meanwhile, the structural constraints on this discretion set the basic form of these routines, making them easier to mimic by other local states while limiting their impact on the centralized political system. Moreover, the local officials' preferences are not only present when a crisis arrives; they are integral to the development of new state abilities, by making the local officials launch the project-campaigns in the first place. The complex interaction among the position of local officials in the state, the issue at hand, and the local circumstances at the time of decision-making produces sufficient variations in these preferences.Starting with this diversity in intention and with the help of an effective method to acquire new abilities, the reform era witnesses the rapid growth of local state abilities and a significant increase in the state's overall adaptability. It should be noted that due to the limited scope of discretion-driven project-campaigns, these new state abilities result predominantly from adjustments of existing bureaucratic functions and better use of state resources. Because of the dominant role of the Chinese state in society, these state abilities can and have withstand a wide variety of sudden changes and developmental challenges. However, on issues that require significant cooperation with non-state groups, such as scientific innovation and welfare negotiations, these state abilities are much less diverse. Accordingly, the state's performance in these areas will be more struggling.
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653 $a Response diversity
653 $a China
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