Monthly Archives: October 2013

The excellent ChinaFile project has a new conversation based on the following question: Why’s China’s Smog Crisis Still Burning So Hot? The core answers are already provided by Alex Wang, Isabel Hilton, Jeremy Goldkorn, and Shai Oster. China has developed … Continue reading →

Profiling the Victims: public awareness of pollution-related harm in China Relational Repression in China: Using Social Ties to Demobilize Protesters Can China Bring Back the Best? The Communist Party Organizes China’s Search for Talent All China today.

Second of a regular series. Also note that these aren’t truly that fresh since I’m going through the backlog of my unread RSS. 1. Participation in IMF-sponsored economic programs and contentious collective action in Latin America, 1980-2007 2. Non-state actors in civil … Continue reading →

There was a time not so long ago that I would go through dozens of RSS feeds on a near daily basis using Google reader. Then google reader died. I set up feedly and digg reader but rarely used them. … Continue reading →

I am on the record as being skeptical that the Chinese regime is going to change its urbanization policies radically in the upcoming Third Plenum. Sinocism‘s continuing coverage of news related to the twists and turns of this debate has … Continue reading →

Dan Drezner notes an amusing coincidence: an Economist special report on a “gated globe” is published on the same day that the NYT runs an op-ed entitled “The End of the Nation-State?” about a global free exchange led by cities … Continue reading →

I had my students write blog posts for class. Here’s what happened. While a fellow at Yale’s MacMillan Center for the academic year, I’m teaching a course on Contemporary Nondemocratic Regimes. It’s a seminar with a final paper rather than … Continue reading →

The nice people at Link Asia ran an interview with me looking into China’s urbanization plans. While it’s clear that I have a lot to learn about appearing on TV (sitting too close to the camera and nodding incessantly among other … Continue reading →

The Atlantic, The Aspen Institute, and Bloomberg Philanthropies are putting on a fun event on cities, CityLab: Urban Solutions to Global Challenges. Having written a book on the political role of cities in the developing world and particularly in China, I thought … Continue reading →

Why don’t citizens revolt against governments that fail them and lose their legitimacy? Governments care about their popular support, even in nondemocracies (Geddes & Zaller 1989). Jay Ulfelder, of the Dart Throwing Chimp empire, takes a skeptical view of legitimacy … Continue reading →