Review Essay: How to Merge Western Theories and Chinese Indigenous Theories to Study Chinese Politics?

2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 283-294 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chunman Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Review Essay ◽  
Chinese Politics ◽  
Indigenous Theories

Chinese politics and comparative authoritarianism: institutionalization and adaptation for regime resilience

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Hiroki Takeuchi ◽  
Saavni Desai
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Review Essay ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Information Gathering ◽  
Authoritarian Regime ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Chinese Politics ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Policy Choices ◽  
Regime Resilience

Abstract China's authoritarian regime under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) remains resilient and responsive to domestic and international threats to its survival, especially considering the inherent instability of other authoritarian regimes. What strategies allow the CCP to stay in power? How do institutions help the CCP to sustain one-party rule, if at all? How does the regime maintain centralized rule over its vast population and territory? Finally, how does the regime respond to the people's demands and dissatisfactions? This review essay discusses how the growing literature of comparative authoritarianism helps (or does not help) us to answer these questions. It discusses three books – one on comparative authoritarianism and two on Chinese politics. In How Dictatorships Work: Power, Personalization, and Collapse, the authors (i.e., Barbara Geddes, Joseph Wright, and Erica Frantz) test various hypotheses exploring the issues regarding the central political processes that shape the policy choices of authoritarian regimes, such as seizing power, consolidation of elites, information gathering, and how dictatorships break down. Are their findings consistent or contradictory with observation of Chinese authoritarian politics? To answer this question, we draw empirical evidence from Bruce Dickson's The Dictator's Dilemma: The Chinese Communist Party's Strategy for Survival and Min Ye's The Belt Road and Beyond: State Mobilized Globalization in China, 1998–2018. These books suggest why China's authoritarian regime remains resilient.

REVIEW ESSAY: THE SAFETY VALVE ANALOGY IN CHINESE POLITICS

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 281-294 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Chen
Keyword(s):  
Review Essay ◽  
Safety Valve ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Institutional Reform ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
Chinese Politics ◽  
Central Feature ◽  
Authoritarian Rule ◽  
The Government ◽  
Political Decisions

AbstractStudies on Chinese politics frequently utilize the safety valve analogy to describe various political decisions that allow space for feedback and challenges. Drawing upon these empirical studies and the theoretical literature on institution, authoritarianism, and democratization, this review essay delineates the logic of the safety valve strategy and how it fits into the scheme of prolonging authoritarian rule. It identifies the use of informal and temporary measures to appease aggrieved citizens as the central feature of the safety valve strategy, complementing formal means such as institutional reform. The informal and temporary measures are different from the patronage system, and credibility is not necessarily a prerequisite for effectiveness. The safety valve strategy contributes to authoritarian resilience by relieving public frustration, reducing the propensity to contentious politics, and in some cases enabling the government to collect information on potential opposition groups or emerging problems.

scholarly journals Review Essay: What Happened to the Study of China in Comparative Politics?

2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie-Eve Reny
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Review Essay ◽  
The United States ◽  
Chinese Politics ◽  
The Core ◽  
China's Rise ◽  
Contemporary Chinese ◽  
Study Of Chinese Politics

In 1986, Kenneth Lieberthal observed that the study of China in the United States had had little effect on the evolution of political science. Over twenty years later, its impact on the core debates in comparative politics seems to have been no more significant. Why have some of the most influential books in the study of contemporary Chinese politics not been significant in the discipline of comparative politics? Based on a quantitative overview of forty-two comparative politics syllabi, my argument is twofold. First, China scholarship has isolated the study of Chinese politics by primarily publishing in area journals, building analyses around debates exclusive to Chinese politics, and generating knowledge with limited contemplation of its potential for generalization outside China. Second, comparative politics seems to have been caught in a “democratic prism,” which has impeded scholars' ability to adapt some of the debates to empirical changes associated with China's rise and development.

Review Essay: History and Postmodernism

2006 ◽  
Vol 26 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 121-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beth Lord ◽  
James Tomlinson
Keyword(s):  
Review Essay

Roshdi Rashed

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 279-295
Author(s):  
Mohammed Aref
Keyword(s):  
Review Essay ◽  
Great Book ◽  
Mathematical Language ◽  
Single Word ◽  
Major Work ◽  
Galileo Galilei ◽  
Elementary Knowledge ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Universe

This review essay introduces the work of the Egyptian scientific historian and philosopher Roshdi Rashed, a pioneer in the field of the history of Arab sciences. The article is based on the five volumes he originally wrote in French and later translated into Arabic, which were published by the Centre for Arab Unity Studies and which are now widely acclaimed as a unique effort to unveil the achievements of Arab scientists. The essay reviews this major work, which seems, like Plato’s Republic to have “No Entry for Those Who Have No Knowledge of Mathematics” written on its gate. If you force your way in, even with elementary knowledge of computation, a philosophy will unfold before your eyes, described by the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei as “written in that great book which ever lies before our eyes—I mean the universe—but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols, in which it is written. This book is written in the mathematical language, and the symbols are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word of it; without which one wanders in vain through a dark labyrinth.” The essay is a journey through this labyrinth where the history of world mathematics got lost and was chronicled by Rashed in five volumes translated from the French into Arabic. It took him fifteen years to complete.

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