County and Township Cadres as a Strategic Group. A New Approach to Political Agency in China’s Local State

Abstract

Linking up with and critically assessing the recent literature on the local state in China, this article introduces a new framework to understand group behavior and strategic agency in local policy processes. Conceptualizing county and township cadres as a ‘strategic group’, the framework offers a number of analytical tools for better understanding the conditions of effective and ineffective policy implementation. Drawing on insights from development sociology, Bourdieu’s theory of capital formation and the garbage can model from organization theory, against a background of extensive fieldwork in numerous Chinese counties over the last years conducted by the authors, the article intends to theoretically substantiate the current knowledge of China scholars on the nexus between actors and their institutional environment in the Chinese local state.