Accountability without Democracy: Solidary Groups and Public Goods Provision in Rural China

Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics

by Lily L. Tsai

This book examines the fundamental issue of how citizens get government officials to provide them with the roads, schools, and other public services they need by studying communities in rural China. In authoritarian and transitional systems, formal institutions for holding government officials accountable are often weak. The answer, Lily L. Tsai found, lies in a community's social institutions. Even when formal democratic and bureaucratic institutions of accountability are weak, government officials can still be subject to informal rules and norms created by community solidary groups that have earned high moral standing in the community.

Genres: China, Political Science, Politics, Nonfiction

368 pages, Paperback

First published August 27, 2007

Reviews

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you want to do good social science, not to mention understand a lot about rural communities in China, you would do well to read this book. Tsai takes on several major lines of thinking about rural development and how governments provide public goods--roads, drinking water, education--and shows how they utterly fail to explain situations in rural China. Communities that are richer or have better election procedures don't have better government provision of public goods. Instead, it's where local religious and kinship groups are strong that residents are able to hold officials accountable--and involvement in these groups in turn makes local leaders more able to mobilize residents for the common good. Tsai lays out the arguments she's addressing and sets out her claims with clarity and depth, covering a wealth of literature across political science, sociology, and anthropology. Then she supports it with data from in-depth case studies and a survey of over 300 villages, which provide both breadth of coverage and nuanced demonstrations of the mechanisms she proposes in her theory. While policy changes since she did her field work have dramatically changed rural public goods provision in China, this book remains a provocative piece of scholarship that provides great insight into the different, but patterned, ways rural communities work.

[风花 · Rating 3 out of 5]

这本书，就和我读这本书时候的“爱の心路”一样，充满期待的开局，但走了一半又想快速结束或逃离。观点很好，论证的也很规整，但让人厌烦的是，一个几页就能说清楚的观点，扩写成了一本书。作者的观点就在P252-254页，甚至这本书都没有什么读的必要，只去读作者把本书缩写成的论文就可，甚至可以说，写成一篇论文才是和作者的观点相匹配的体量……

作者发现经济好的村庄并不一定会为村民提供好的公告服务，于是作者把研究的视角转向了非正式的问责系统，在本书中就是solidary groups ，“如寺庙、宗族或部落等基于共同道德义务和道德标准的团体——可以提供非正式的规则和规范，虽然这些规则和规范不是为了帮助公民追究地方官员的责任而创建的，但仍可以提高对官员的问责。”（p253）

作者发现那些一个村里只有一个宗族的村庄，村干部属于该宗族，于是宗族会给村干部形成道德压力，让他为村庄提供道路学校或供水，这些不能靠正式的官僚问责系统。而且一个村庄还不能有两个宗族，这样会内斗。

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

an immense amount of work. & I learned about China

[Tuo Tuo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Actually, the assumptions are a little bit old-fashioned functionalistic...But I know why poli-sci guys like it...