Localized Bargaining

Reviews / Votes

Localized Bargaining is an important addition to the literature, providing insights into one of the most salient aspects of Chinese politics-the triangulated relationship between top decision makers, local bureaucrats, and the masses. Ma is to be applauded for providing insight into "a regularized, controllable mechanism" for the bottom up articulating of interests. * Karl Yan, Journal of Contemporary Asia * Overall, the author has conducted solid fieldwork and collected a wealth of first-hand information, which is not easy to do in China. The book's target group consists of political scientists and geographers. It not only sheds light on the politics behind the largest infrastructure project in human history, but also echoes some of the more general questions of political and geographical studies in general. * Guo Jie, Institute of Geography, Guangdong Academy of Sciences, EURASIAN GEOGRAPHY AND ECONOMICS * Drawing on interviews and a variety of new data sources, Localized Bargaining tells a compelling tale of the politics that drives the allocation of infrastructure in the absence of democracy-those who lobby for projects, it shows, are not citizens, but intermediary recipients such as local governments and functional departments. This is an indispensable book for understanding how bureaucratic bargaining and 'fragmented authoritarianism' works in China's infrastructure-fueled development. * Yuen Yuen Ang, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor * This empirically rich book uncovers how the non-monolithic political system in China creates opportunities for local authorities to participate in the policy making of the central authority. Xiao Ma convincingly demonstrates that Chinese local governments are able to seek policy benefits because of the fragmented authorities of the decision-making bureaucracy. This insightful book makes an important contribution to understanding distributive politics in authoritarian states. * Yongshun Cai, Hong Kong University of Science & Technology * Seen from the outside, China's high-speed rail network epitomizes the centralized power of the party-state. Ma's pathbreaking study, which takes us inside the politics of railway development, reveals a far more complex picture. With rich quantitative and qualitative evidence, Ma traces the interplay of bottom-up and top-down agency and formal and informal rules, reshaping our understanding of 'who gets what, when, and how.' * Kyle A. Jaros, Associate Professor of Global Affairs, University of Notre Dame * Xiao Ma significantly advances our understanding of bureaucracy. His investigation of the massive infrastructure investment in the Chinese high-speed rail system reveals not only the role of bureaucracy in maintaining authoritarian rule but also the mechanisms by which it does so. His rich account reveals that what seems to be top-down authority is actually a complex of bargains in which local actors transform the intentions of the centralized state: the 'cardinals,' those with significant institutional power in local territorial politics, try to impose their agenda while the 'clerics,' those with less institutional power, try to get their voices heard by mobilizing protests. This extraordinary in-depth study represents a new account of how to think about bureaucracy not only in China and not only in the developing world-but wherever major infrastructure is at issue. * Margaret Levi, Professor of Political Science, Stanford University * Ma's book offers an insightful demonstration of localised bargaining, and thus has theoretical significance and current relevance. * Bingzhao Chang, PhD candidate at the School of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Nanjing University, China Perspectives *