Abstract
ABSTRACTThis paper foregrounds and evaluates the research design associated with the study of Chinese state rescaling. It first synthesizes the existing gaps in the original, Western-based state rescaling framework. It then explores how different methodological channels are integrated to support a revised analytical framework. Specifically, it presents the value of multi-sited comparisons through (1) the ‘extended case method’ and (2) the ‘concurrent nested strategy’. In so doing, the paper offers a systematic assessment of the methodological contributions and constraints in ascertaining and explaining how regulatory reconfigurations unfold across space and time in China.
Highlights
Since the mid-1970s, advanced economies in western Europe and North America have been experiencing a transition from a nationally-configured, Fordist-Keynesian developmental approach towards a ‘flexible’ mode of production based in and around city-regions
A similar reconfiguration was occurring in previously-insulated China following the re-implementation of market-like rule in 1978: special economic zones (SEZs) became designated in strategic cities to engage the global system of capitalism, while production within the vast rural hinterland was downsized from massive communes to the individual household
This paper presents and critically reflects on the research design for a multi-sited study of these “new areas”
Summary
Since the mid-1970s, advanced economies in western Europe and North America have been experiencing a transition from a nationally-configured, Fordist-Keynesian developmental approach towards a ‘flexible’ mode of production based in and around city-regions. The database was constructed to describe and explain 1) the socioeconomic relations that constituted and are affected by the production of “nationally strategic new areas”; and 2) the impacts of interactions between the experimental policies and the inherited institutions in the two chosen research sites (i.e. Chongqing and the Pearl River Delta) These two case studies helped to sidestep an important ‘methodological trap’, i.e. the notion that a totalizing reconstruction of the past is possible. To ascertain and explain the tendencies and rationale of active spatial configuration in the contemporary juncture and ascertain the extent of path dependency, it was necessary to identify data that could assist in forming a coherent narrative of change In this regard, speeches and/or interviews given by key causal actors and policy documents could more incisively reveal why specific actors like Wang Yang and Bo Xilai drove state rescaling than analyses of statistical significance or software-based modeling (see, for instance, Lim, 2016; cf Lim and Horesh, 2017; Gao et al, 2017) Speeches and/or interviews given by key causal actors and policy documents could more incisively reveal why specific actors like Wang Yang and Bo Xilai drove state rescaling than analyses of statistical significance or software-based modeling (see, for instance, Lim, 2016; cf. Lim and Horesh, 2017; Gao et al, 2017)
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