Changing State-society Relations Research Articles

Book review: Governing Neighborhoods in Urban China: Changing State–Society Relations

Book review: Governing Neighborhoods in Urban China: Changing State–Society Relations

Growing rights consciousness of the marginalised and the reshuffling of the landlord–tenant power relationship: Examining a country park‐induced displacement in Shanghai

AbstractInformal settlements are often subject to government‐led demolitions and clearances. In contemporary China, the removal of such settlements often necessitates negotiations between governments and landlords who are hard to dislocate, as exemplified in ‘Nail Households’ literature, whereas migrant tenants, if any, can be easily evicted without appropriate compensation. Our case study, however, presents evidence contrary to this. Migrant tenants proactively defended their rights and demanded compensation from their landlords. Drawing upon the lens of rights consciousness, this paper examines how the presumably marginalised migrant tenants were able to successfully defend their rights and interests. We found that (i) social capital accumulation, stigmatisation, the exclusion of planning participation and the transfer of clearance responsibility through two rounds of ‘state retreats’ reinforced the rights consciousness of migrant tenants and served to consolidate their bargaining power, contributing to a reshuffling of the landlord–tenant power position. (ii) The landlords, incentivised by attractive compensation packages, were brought into a temporary and fragile alliance with government agencies to secure the dislocation of the migrant tenants. The landlords thus took responsibility for the clearance from government agencies, whereas the local state was able to tactfully avoid any government–tenant confrontations. Although the tenants were able to secure adequate compensation from their landlords, the overall situation brought an end to the social support that existed in migrant enclaves and thus hampered their upward social mobility. This study revisits the understanding of the reshuffling of the landlord–tenant power relationship, albeit contingent and transient, against the backdrop of changing state–society relations.

Urban informality and the state: Repairing Cairo’s waters through Gehood Zateya

Equitable and just access to urban water presents challenges for global policymakers. In Egypt, providing and maintaining access to water has always been associated with the state. Recently, however, in cities such as Cairo, water shortages have led to the inclusion of multiple actors in the complicated processes of water access and repair. This paper argues that the state’s hegemonic control over water governance is contested by increasingly blurred binaries of formal and informal everyday practices. I show how water governance in Cairo operates through a plurality of informal practices – gehood zateya (individual and community efforts) – which cross boundaries of class, legality and space. By drawing on theories of hybrid infrastructures and urban informality, water access and repair in Cairo emerge as relational processes shaped by socio-technical practices of state and non-state actors. This paper explores two case studies demonstrating the politicization of repair in a marginalized informal area and elite/middle-class gated communities. These cases illustrate how residents living in informal areas maintain relations with the state through community water systems and ‘cultures of repair’, while elite residents engage in ‘private governance’ schemes and rely on networks of privilege. This article offers insights into changing state-society relations during transitions to water privatization and the shaping of Cairo’s uneven urban waterscape.

Land acquisition and involuntary displacement: A study of changing state society relations

Land acquisition and involuntary displacement: A study of changing state society relations

Land Acquisition and Involuntary Displacement: A Study of Changing State Society Relations

Land Acquisition and Involuntary Displacement: A Study of Changing State Society Relations

Social Value Chains: A New Organizational Framework for Studies on State-Society Relations in China

In the past three decades, many studies have emerged to conceptualize the changing state-society relations in China. Yet, less attention has been paid to what kinds of social sector organizations these competing or conflicting studies were empirically examining. This lack of a synthesis of the organizational foundations of these studies has resulted in fragmentation and weak generalization of the arguments on Chinese state-society relations. To address this issue, this article systematically reviews the organizational bases in the extant literature on the Chinese state-society relations. It then constructs an inclusive organizational framework, social value chains (SVCs), for future research by combining two mainstream organizational forms in extant research with two understudied organizational types. This new organizational framework includes four types of social sector organizations: infrastructure organizations, financial organizations, support organizations, and operating organizations. This article concludes by revealing potential applications of the new organizational framework to guide future research on state-society relations in China.

Gradual Constitutional Change and Federal Dynamics – German Federalism Reform in Historical Perspective

ABSTRACTIn order to understand reform in German federalism, this article applies the framework of “dynamic institutionalism”. It explains change as a result of a particular pattern of constitutional policy emerging in a sequential evolution of institutions and responding to changing state–society relations. Historical legacies found expression in negotiations predominated by bargaining among governments, guided by legalist approaches of lawyers and court decisions and influenced by specialists in public administration. In this context, societal change affected the agenda but had limited impact on processes and outcomes. In consequence, the reform ended with many detailed constitutional amendments not amounting to substantial change. In a comparative perspective, German federalism may have its strengths, but its reform should not be regarded as a role model for other federations. Instead, it exemplifies the problematic consequences of a constitutional policy not sufficiently separated from normal intergovernmental policy-making and strongly embedded in a self-enforcing evolution of institutions.

In the name of ‘Citizens’: civic activism and policy entrepreneurship of Chinese public intellectuals in the Hu–Wen era

ABSTRACTThe rise and fall of public intellectuals in contemporary China is essentially attributed to the ever changing state–society relations. The author demonstrates that some Chinese public intellectuals have developed a new strategy to promote policy changes in the Hu–Wen era through civic activism in the name of ordinary citizens, by abandoning their traditional capacity as experts or intellectuals. The article summarizes three specific actions of civic activism, namely, ‘petition for constitutionality review as citizens’, ‘provisional voluntary citizen groups’ and ‘netizen public welfare enterprises’. Cases have been studied to demonstrate that the policy entrepreneurship of public intellectuals in civic activism can be manifested as innovation and strategies that challenge the lacunae between policy and existing institutions.

Solomon Islands in Transition?

ABSTRACTThe notion of ‘transition’ as used to describe the recent drawdown of the decade-long Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) provides an obvious departure point for considering what other transformations – social, political and economic – are under way in the archipelagic nation. Yet the contributions to this special issue collectively reject the teleological language of transition and transformation deployed by many development actors in favour of a more nuanced and historically informed understanding of the central dialect between change and continuity, with change in Solomon Islands occurring slowly and in distinctly non-linear ways. This dialectic is traced and interrogated in various ways by the contributors to this issue. One broad theme concerns the contested narratives of changing state–society relations and, in particular, those between the central government and the rural localities where most Solomon Islanders continue to reside. Another is the changing social relations around land and natural resources engendered by ongoing processes of globalisation and persistent patterns of demographic change, migration and urbanisation. These and other processes of historical change, including state formation and capital accumulation, are also shaped by the enduring realities of scale and distance integral to Solomon Islands archipelagic geography. In this essay we explore these themes of change and continuity in Solomon Islands, positioning the individual contributions within this larger trajectory of slow-paced and distinctly non-linear change. Drawing heuristically on RAMSI's genesis in the state-building moment that dominated international relations during the first decade of this century, we also examine the distinction between ‘state-building’ and ‘state formation’ in the Solomon Islands context and, in doing so, contrast the tropes of state failure, weakness and fragility against narratives of resilience, tenacity, innovation and experimentation.

Limits to “counter-neoliberal” reform: Mining expansion and the marginalisation of post-extractivist forces in Evo Morales’s Bolivia

The expansion of resource extractivism in Latin America in the last decade has been related to previous neoliberalisation processes, which opened-up mineral exploitation to transnational firms and granted investors favourable conditions. Extractivism, however, expanded equally (or more) in countries which have undertaken “counter-neoliberal” reform—as it is most clearly the case for Evo Morales’s Bolivia. Building on regulationist approaches and strategic-relational state theory, this paper analyses recent changes in the governance of Bolivian mining. It contributes to understanding how and why the Morales governments’ objectives to initiate a transition towards a more plural and diversified economy—informed by social movements—have not been achieved to date. We make three interrelated claims. First, the expansion of mining has been enabled by the maintaining of institutional arrangements for mineral exploitation established during neoliberalism, favouring transnational firms and self-employed (“cooperative”) miners over state-owned and community-managed operations. Second, despite the new government’s improved legal framework for the promotion of environmental and indigenous rights, the mining sector has continued to benefit from de facto lax environmental regulation, which constitutes an indirect incentive to expansion at the expense of ecologies and indigenous–peasant livelihoods. Third, the state has played a central role in weakening social resistance to mining expansion, by demobilising those social forces—particularly peasant–indigenous organisations—whose proposals and demands conflicted most clearly with extractivist development. We suggest, therefore, that analysing changing state–society relations is central to understanding the counter-neoliberalisation of resource governance and its limits.

Recent Studies on Indonesian Islam: A Sign of Intellectual Exhaustion?

Recent Studies on Indonesian Islam:A Sign of Intellectual Exhaustion? Iqra Anugrah1 (bio) Jajat Burhanudin and Kees Van Dijk, eds. Islam in Indonesia: Contrasting Images and Interpretation. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2013. 279 pp. Noorhaidi Hasan. The Making of Public Islam: Piety, Democracy and Youth in Indonesian Politics. Yogyakarta: SUKA Press, 2013. 330 pp. Mirjam Künkler and Alfred Stepan, eds. Democracy and Islam in Indonesia. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013. 252 pp. Martin van Bruinessen, ed. Contemporary Developments in Indonesian Islam: Explaining the “Conservative Turn.” Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2013. 240 pp. Islam in Indonesia continues to be a main focus of studies on Indonesian society and politics. Recent research on this subject analyses Indonesian Islam in the context of changing state-society relations in post-authoritarian era. However, despite the proliferation of new studies and empirical findings on post-authoritarian Indonesian Islam, their primary analytical lens remains unchanged. This lens is based on five main [End Page 105] theoretical assumptions about Indonesian Islam, namely (1) the primacy of culturalist and idealist explanations of Indonesian Islam, (2) the dichotomy between “moderate-progressive” and “conservative-fundamentalist” Islamic groups, (3) a focus on Islamic groups and institutions within society, (4) a presentist view of Indonesian Islam, and (5) methodologically, a crude division of labor between humanities scholars and social scientists. Such a research agenda, unfortunately, has a number of major weaknesses. First of all, it reifies the “moderate-progressive versus conservative-fundamentalist” view of Indonesian Islam, thereby reducing the complexity and diversity within Indonesian Islam and possibly essentializing it. Second, its overemphasis on the role of Islamic groups and institutions isolates the dynamics of these groups from larger structural contexts, that is, the changing nature of political economy, class configurations, and state-society relations in post-authoritarian Indonesia. Likewise, the mainstream approach to studying Indonesian Islam also overlooks the transnational impact of changes in global political economy on Islamic movements worldwide, including Indonesian Islam. Given all of this, the lack of an innovative research agenda for contemporary studies of Indonesian Islam might be symptomatic of intellectual exhaustion. The recent works on Indonesian Islam under review here are not free from the shortcomings described above. With the exception of Noorhaidi Hasan’s monograph, most of the essays in the other three edited volumes look at Indonesian Islam from a mainstream perspective. As such, although the empirics of their findings are appreciated, their analytical frameworks have been overused. To overcome this barrier, reviving a critical materialist approach that takes into account both ideational and historical-structural dimensions can provide a breakthrough for future research on Indonesian Islam. The Same Old Wine in the Same Old Bottle Perhaps the clearest sign of the lack of new theoretical breakthroughs can be found in Mirjam Künkler and Alfred Stepan’s and Martin van Bruinessen’s edited volumes. At the risk of being accused of exaggeration, any serious student of comparative politics, Indonesia, and political Islam will find it difficult to point out what is really new in these two books, despite the fact that the editors and many of the contributors are long-time observers of Indonesian political Islam. Künkler and Stepan open the discussion in the introduction by outlining the four main foci of their book, namely, theoretical discussion of Indonesia’s democratization, attitudes and behaviors of religious and political actors, religion, and law. The main emphasis here is on the competition and disagreement over political discourses and the need to find a Rawlsian “overlapping consensus”2 among different religious and political actors (6). They also emphasize the role of public intellectuals in promoting democratic values and combating anti-democratic ideas (7). In the second chapter, William Liddle and Saiful Mujani, two other senior scholars on Indonesian Islam and [End Page 106] politics, discuss Indonesia’s democratization using Linz and Stepan’s classic work on democratic transition and consolidation as a benchmark.3 The focus of their essay is on the attitudinal, behavioral, and constitutional dimensions of democratic consolidation in five arenas: civil, political, and economic societies; the rule of law; and the state’s apparatus. The second part of the book discusses the discursive aspect of relations among...

Authoritarian policing with Chinese characteristics: A case study of motorcycle bans in the Pearl River Delta

Despite unprecedented economic and social changes over the past three decades, China remains an authoritarian regime. However, the current authoritarian regime differs in many ways from that under Mao. Since the nature of a police force reflects the character of the political regime within which it operates, this paper explores current police practices in China. It argues that policing in China is neither completely authoritarian nor democratic, but best understood as soft-authoritarian. The case study examines policing of a motorcycle ban that was implemented to prevent motorcycle snatch theft in the Pearl River Delta. The police remained authoritarian and used many coercive strategies to push for the motorcycle ban. However, their hard-line strategies were matched by some soft-line persuasive tactics. I argue that changing state-society relations are leading to resistance to hard-authoritarian policing and contributing to soft-authoritarian policing in China.

Politics, class actors, and health sector reform in Brazil and Venezuela

Universal access to healthcare has assumed renewed importance in global health discourse, along with a focus on strengthening health systems. These developments are taking place in the backdrop of concerted efforts to advocate moving away from vertical, disease-based approaches to tackling health problems. While this approach to addressing public health problems is a step in the right direction, there is still insufficient emphasis on understanding the socio-political context of health systems. Reforms to strengthen health systems and achieve universal access to healthcare should be cognizant of the importance of the socio-political context, especially state-society relations. That context determines the nature and trajectory of reforms promoting universality or any pro-equity change. Brazil and Venezuela in recent years have made progress in developing healthcare systems that aim to achieve universal access. These achievements are noteworthy given that, historically, both countries had a long tradition of healthcare systems which were highly privatized and geared towards access to healthcare for a small segment of the population while the majority was excluded. These achievements are also remarkable since they took place in an era of neoliberalism when many states, even those with universally-based healthcare systems, were moving in the opposite direction. We analyze the socio-political context in each of these countries and look specifically at how the changing state-society relations resulted in health being constitutionally recognized as a social right. We describe the challenges that each faced in developing and implementing healthcare systems embracing universality. Our contention is that achieving the principle of universality in healthcare systems is less of a technical matter and more a political project. It involves opposition from the socially conservative elements in the society. Navigation to achieve this goal requires a political strategy that involves various actors within the state, the political society and civil society.

Indonesia's Law on Public Services: changing state–society relations or continuing politics as usual?

Institutional reforms introduced after the collapse of the New Order regime have brought state–society relations in Indonesia under increased scrutiny. This paper uses an evaluation of Law 25/2009 on Public Services as a means to assess whether the new political setting has increased the leverage of the citizenry over the state. Adopted in July 2009, the law introduced a range of regulations for public service providers. It also expanded the responsibilities of the Ombudsman's office and called for the establishment of citizen committees to monitor public service delivery. However, the legal quality of the law is poor and the broader institutional and political environment is not conducive to its enforcement. Overall, the law aims beyond the capacity of the current political and legal system. Ironically, in order for society to gain greater leverage in politics, state capacity must increase as well.

Crafting and dismantling the egalitarian social contract: the changing state-society relations in globalizing Korea

Between the late 1960s and the early 1980s, the Korean developmental state implemented a series of drastic egalitarian educational policies that were primarily geared toward social integration. While promoting social mobility and educational expansion, they provided the basis of the egalitarian social contract in Korea's educational policymaking for decades. Since the 1990s, however, the Korean state has implemented neoliberal education reforms that led to the rapid dismantling of the egalitarian framework for the country's educational policymaking. These neoliberal reforms were strongly supported by the affluent middle class that prefer elitist education and can afford expensive private education. The general direction of change in Korea's educational policymaking suggests both significant change and continuity in the character of the Korean state and its relations to society since the 1990s. The contemporary Korean state still maintains a highly strategic and activist orientation in adopting and implementing policies although its policies are increasingly neoliberal in content. In doing so, the Korean state is gradually abandoning its broad social base and mobilizational capacity, while increasingly connecting with the upper segments of the middle class.

Local People's Congresses and Governing ChinaLocal People's Congresses in China: Development and Transition. Young Nam ChoThe People's Congresses and Governance in China: Toward a Network Mode of Governance. Ming Xia

Young Nam Cho, Local People 's Congresses in China: Development and Transition. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 192pp. US$80.00 (hardcover). Ming Xia, The People 's Congresses and Governance in China: Toward a Network Mode of Governance. London: Routledge, 2007. 300pp. US$130.00 (hardcover). Taken together, these two books depict the role that local People's Congresses (FPCs) play in Chinese politics. The image that emerges is somewhat unexpected. One might have thought that the crucial question about FPCs centers on how representative they are. What stands out in these accounts, however, is how little attention is devoted to elections, deputy-constituent ties and speaking out at plenary sessions. For Young Nam Cho and Ming Xia, the big story is occurring inside the state, and concerns institutionalization, multi-step deliberation and enhanced oversight. Administrative reforms have transformed the policy process, and new arenas have been created to manage conflict. FPCs have benefited greatly from this re-division of labor and are not a rival show or a rubber stamp (Xia, p. 228) but partners in governance providing a venue for interested parties (mostly within the bureaucracy) to work out disagreements. Energetic FPCs are first and foremost a sign that where Chinese takes place has changed. Fegislative development, in this way of thinking, has less to do with responsiveness and changing state-society relations and more to do with statebuilding, restructuring bureaucratic ties and making Party rule predictable and effective. If FPCs have become a strong political force in local politics (Cho, p. 163) but have been empowered only selectively (with much more attention to lawmaking and oversight than to representation), what does this imply about the shape of the Chinese polity?1 More simply, what do local People's Congresses do, what do they not do, and what does their mixture of activism and quiescence say about how governance is changing? Evidence and Variation Students of LPCs sometimes fall prey to cherry-picking instances of assertiveness, and downplay the fact that most congresses remain pliant and passive. Cho and Xia do not avoid this trap entirely. Many passages, especially in Xia's book, detail the most exciting (but perhaps least representative) episodes of contestation, muscularity in lawmaking and vigorous oversight. The significance of events such as vetoing a court work report (the Shenyang Incident) or interpellating and then refusing to ratify several bureau directors (the Guangdong Phenomena) (Cho, pp. 1-2) can at times be difficult to evaluate, and a feeling lingers that atypical occurrences (and unusually hardworking congresses) have been blown up beyond their import.2 That said, both authors have assembled convincing evidence that LPCs are more active than previously thought and that many are closer to the local center of power than the National People's Congress (NPC) is in Beijing (Cho, p. 163; Xia, p. 25O).3 At a time when the NPC often appears sleepy and handcuffed, the most enterprising local congresses introduce innovations that begin in the provinces and spread outwards. Formerly quiet LPCs emulate dynamic neighbors, and policy diffusion occurs on issues including nationalities' autonomy, consumer rights and the protection of children (Xia, pp. 163-64; Cho, pp. 15, 165). 4 Provincial congresses, especially, have filled a void created by too few national laws promoting economic liberalization (Xia, p. 5), such that, by the late 1990s, legislators in Shanghai and Shenzhen were heard bragging about how advanced their congresses were compared to the NPC, in terms both of top-notch staff and an ability to enact controversial laws.5 Still, legislative activism remains uneven, among and within provinces (Cho, p. 5).6 In the absence of a nationwide sample (or armies of scholars studying People's Congresses), Cho offers a number of useful hypotheses about variation and how to understand it. …

Rhetoric or action? An assessment of the administrative reform in Taiwan

Administrative reform in Taiwan has to be understood within the contexts of recent political development. The ROC government has been transforming from an authoritarian regime to a democratic one since 1987. Within the context of changing state–society relations, administrative reform in Taiwan can be perceived as the products of politicization through which politicians, bureaucrats and members of the civil society attempt to advance their respective interests and influences in the interactive relations. A revised ‘Political Nexus Triad’ (PNT) that distinguishes the supply (politicians and bureaucrats) and demand (civil society) sides of the reform is used in this study. It is argued that the demand for the transformation of governance in Taiwan has been intensified, but reform efforts lack political support from the leadership.

Young Authority: Quantitative and Qualitative Insights into Youth, Youth Culture, and State Power in Contemporary Morocco

This article presents the results of a quantitative survey among 622 young Moroccans in 2003/04 on concepts of legitimacy under Mohammed VI. The article regards itself as a contribution to the debate about authoritarianism in the Middle East and the production of social consent in Muslim states. It explores changing state–society relations with quantitative as well as qualitative means. The findings show that traditional sources of legitimacy are declining whereas modern rationales and a ‘youthful sprit’ rise as reasons for accepting the young king's authority. The habitus of youth needs to be regarded as a major contributing element to the stability of the Moroccan monarchy today. The results show clearly that processes of political modernisation and democratisation are more crucial to women than men.

The Evolution of Administrative Reform in Taiwan: From Authoritarian Government to Democratic Governance

Abstract Administrative reform in Taiwan can only be understood within the context of recent political development. The government has been changed from an authoritarian regime to a democratic one since 1987. By examining administrative reform programs in Taiwan in terms of changing state-society relations over time, this article attempts to demonstrate that government actions have been constrained by the structuralized historical realities. Administrative reforms ought to be perceived as the products of politicization through which politicians, bureaucrats, and members of the civil society attempt to advance their respective interests and influence in the interactive relations. Recent administrative reform programs in Taiwan have embraced the notions of New Public Management (NPM). However, in the process of authoritarian transformation, the implementation of NPM-based reforms has encountered difficulties and resistance. These barriers of reform are all familiar to students of public administration. An a...

Idiom and action in the changing state-society relations of South East Asia

Idiom and action in the changing state-society relations of South East Asia