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Retrofitting Leninism explains, through the lens of China, how open governance and modern information technology come together to sustain a tightly controlled but socially responsive system of authoritarianism. When closed authoritarian regimes reform and open up, they often fail, most eventually breakdown. The People's Republic of China stands as a notable exception. How has the ruling Chinese Communist Party maintained power throughout decades of reform and rapid development? Drawing inspiration from the CCP's Leninist origins, Dimitar Gueorguiev offers a novel and empirically grounded explanation. The key to the CCP's staying power, he argues, is its ability to integrate authoritarian control with social inclusion - a combination that is being facilitated by modern telecommunications technology. Relying on statistical data, media reports, and a series of original opinion polls, Gueorguiev explores how public input feeds into political oversight and policy planning. To unpack how public preferences are acquired, processed, and prioritized, he analyses bottom-up representation and coordination in local Chinese legislatures. Finally, to evaluate the impact of inclusion, he shows that public engagement contributes to both policy stability and public satisfaction. Although public inclusion is instrumental to the CCP's hold on power, Gueorguiev underscores that "inclusive authoritarianism" greatly depends on the voluntary participation of Chinese citizens, which is far from guaranteed. A trenchant exploration of the Leninist model today, Retrofitting Leninism will reshape our understanding of the authoritarian approach to government and its prospects for the future.
“One of the most profound and illuminating studies of this century to have been published in recent decades.”—John Gray, New York Times Book Review Hailed as “a magisterial critique of top-down social planning” by the New York Times, this essential work analyzes disasters from Russia to Tanzania to uncover why states so often fail—sometimes catastrophically—in grand efforts to engineer their society or their environment, and uncovers the conditions common to all such planning disasters. “Beautifully written, this book calls into sharp relief the nature of the world we now inhabit.”—New Yorker “A tour de force.”— Charles Tilly, Columbia University
"In an era of rapid international economic integration, how do countries interact, innovate, and compete in industries, like energy, that are fundamental to national interests? Collaborative Advantage: Forging Green Industries in the New Global Economy examines the development of wind and solar industries, two sectors of historic importance that have long been the target of ambitious public policy. As wind and solar grew from cottage industries into $300 billion global sectors, China, Germany, and the United States each developed distinct constellations of firms with starkly different technical capabilities. The book shows that globalization itself has reinforced such distinct national patterns of industrial specialization. Economically, globalization has created opportunities for firms to specialize through collaboration with others. Politically, new possibilities for specialization have allowed firms to repurpose existing domestic institutions for application in new industries. Against the backdrop of policy efforts that have generally failed to grasp the cross-national nature of innovation, the book offers a novel explanation for both the causes of changes in the global organization of innovation and their impact on domestic politics. As interdependence in global supply chains has again come under fire in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, Collaborative Advantage challenges the notion that globalization is primarily about competition, highlighting instead the central role of collaboration in in the global economy, particularly in clean energy industries critical to solving the climate crisis"--
"Increasingly powerful, prosperous, and authoritarian, China under the leadership of Xi Jinping has become a more intense competitor across the globe-economically, technologically, diplomatically, militarily, and in seeking to influence people's hearts and minds. But what does China ultimately want in the world? This timely and illuminating book explains the fundamental motivations driving the country's more dynamic, assertive, and risk-taking approach to the world under Xi Jinping. With original and perceptive analysis, Daring to Struggle focuses on six increasingly important interests for today's China-legitimacy, sovereignty, wealth, power, leadership, and ideas-and details how the determined pursuit of them at home and abroad profoundly shapes its foreign relationships, contributing to a more contested strategic environment in the Indo-Pacific and beyond. The book offers rich insights on the increasing role of the Chinese Communist Party in the country's international affairs, the looming risks of conflict in areas of contested sovereignty around China's periphery, Beijing's dramatically changing approach to foreign economic relations, its expanding use of economic leverage and military coercion, China's aspirations to greater leadership in global governance, and the well-resourced promotion of its ideas, image and influence across the world. This lively and accessible perspective on China's global ambitions draws from authoritative Chinese-language sources. The resulting analysis will inform policymakers, executives, China watchers, students, and other globally engaged citizens seeking to understand China's ambitions and how our governments and societies can respond"--
China's rise as an economic superpower has caused growing anxieties in the West. Europe is now applying stricter scrutiny over takeovers by Chinese state-owned giants, while the United States is imposing aggressive sanctions on leading Chinese technology firms such as Huawei, TikTok, and WeChat. Given the escalating geopolitical tensions between China and the West, are there any hopeful prospects for economic globalization? In her compelling new book Chinese Antitrust Exceptionalism, Angela Zhang examines the most important and least understood tactic that China can deploy to counter western sanctions: antitrust law. Zhang reveals how China has transformed antitrust law into a powerful economic weapon, supplying theory and case studies to explain its strategic application over the course of the Sino-US tech war. Zhang also exposes the vast administrative discretion possessed by the Chinese government, showing how agencies can leverage the media to push forward aggressive enforcement. She further dives into the bureaucratic politics that spurred China's antitrust regulation, providing an incisive analysis of how divergent missions, cultures, and structures of agencies have shaped regulatory outcomes. More than a legal analysis, Zhang offers a political and economic study of our contemporary moment. She demonstrates that Chinese exceptionalism-as manifested in the way China regulates and is regulated, is reshaping global regulation and that future cooperation relies on the West comprehending Chinese idiosyncrasies and China achieving greater transparency through integration with its Western rivals.
After more than a decade of democratic regression, three major crises have acted to reshape global politics in recent years: climate change, the Covid-19 pandemic and its economic legacy, and geopolitical conflict. In Democratic Crossroads, Richard Youngs argues these crises are altering the balance between democratic and authoritarian dynamics around the world. Yet while they add to the strains on democracy, they are also awakening a momentum of democratic resilience and renewal. He argues that to deal with the era's momentous challenges, democratic politics need a major boost and reboot. Without stronger commitments to uphold and improve democratic norms and practices, democracy may not weather these challenges. As Youngs shows, far-reaching democratic innovation that gives citizens effective influence over epoch-defining matters will help ensure that democratic values are more vigorously defended. In a moment of pivotal change, this book explains how democracies can retain their resiliency and highlights the key factors that will determine democracy's fortunes in the future.
China’s emergence as a technology leader has become a major factor in geopolitics, transforming global political and economic relationships. In its bid to achieve digital great power status, China’s government has reformed laws and policies, drastically increased investment, and become more assertive internationally. Chinese companies have expanded at home and abroad, but relationships between government and the private sector have sometimes been fractious. The Emergence of China’s Smart State assesses the extent to which the Chinese government has been able to achieve its ambitious digital goals, and more broadly, how this reflects rapidly changing domestic and international political and economic dynamics surrounding China’s rise as a major technology player. This is the first book of its kind, interrogating the complex, dynamic interactions between political, market, and technological factors that structure China’s digital development. It will provide information and intellectual frameworks for scholars, policymakers, and professionals to appreciate the complexity of China’s digital policy landscape, the process of learning and iteration the Party continues to experience as external events impact the policy process, and the impact China’s innovation policies, regulations, and achievements have had, or may have, in the future.
The knowledge economy, a seeming wonder for the world, has caused unintended harms that threaten peace and prosperity and undo international cooperation and the international rule of law. The world faces threats of war, pandemics, growing domestic political discord, climate change, disruption of international trade and investment, immigration, and the pollution of cyberspace, just as international law increasingly falls short as a tool for managing these challenges. Prosperity dependent on meritocracy, open borders, international economic freedom, and a wide-open Internet has met its limits, with international law one of the first casualties. Any effective response to these threats must reflect the pathway by which these perils arrive. Part of the answer to these challenges, Paul B. Stephan argues, must include a re-conception of international law as arising out of pragmatic and limited experiments by states, rather than as grand projects to remake and redeem the world.
Bulldozers, violent thugs, and nonviolent brokers -- The theory : state power, repression, and implications for development -- Outsourcing violence : everyday repression via thugs-for-hire -- Case studies : thugs-for-hire, repression, and mobilization -- Networks of state infrastructural power : brokerage, state penetration, and mobilization -- Brokers in harmonious demolition : mass mobilizers, mediators, and huangniu -- Comparative context : South Korea and India.
This book includes eleven seminal essays by one of America’s leading authorities on modern Chinese history with an illuminating preface by Prof. Elizabeth Perry of Harvard University. it covers a range of topics from the impact of imperialism to the 1989 protests that led to the Tiananmen massacre. Chapters include an explanation of how China expanded its borders far beyond the Han Chinese heartland and maintained those borders in the transition from empire to nation; how Sun Yat-sen unexpectedly emerged as the Father of the Country; and how a series of unexpected and contingent events brought the empire down in 1911. Despite conventional representations of a static and unified China, this book proves Chinese society to be diverse and constantly changing—especially after the Communist revolution which was a transformative event in modern Chinese history. Esherick denounces traditional imagery of cultural uniformity, which derives from excessive attention to the unitary state, through chapters that explore the impact of the 1937-45 War of Resistance against Japan, the dramatic wartime transformation of Chinese society in both Communist and Nationalist (Guomindang) areas, and the nature of the new Communist regime in Northwest China. In his book, Esherick examines both the Marxist-Leninist theory behind Mao’s notion of the “restoration of capitalism,” against which he waged the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, and the political theater of the 1989 protest movement. Throughout the book the contingency of history, the need for careful empirical research, and the important yet limited role of history is highlighted as the key to understanding the present or predicting the future of China.