Monday, February 13, 2017

Yang on China's Illiberal Regulatory State

Dali L. Yang, University of Chicago, has posted China’s Illiberal Regulatory State in Comparative Perspective, which is forthcoming in the Chinese Political Science Review.
Abstract In the spirit of Philippe Schmitter, this study reviews the development of Chinese regulation against the history of the development of the regulatory state in the West. Section One discusses the rise of the regulatory state in western democracies in an age of concern about state expansion. It notes that, generally speaking, the regulatory state in a liberal democratic setting has become accepted as enabling liberal democracies to combine democratic legitimacy with the independence and professionalism of unelected regulatory bodies. Section Two offers a quick overview of the establishment and proliferation of regulatory institutions in China in the context of continued single-Party rule and strong state dominance. Section Three delineates the politics of changes to the regulatory regime from the perspective of political risk and points to dynamics that are animating regulatory state building with Chinese characteristics. Section Four concludes.