Ben Hillman, Patronage and Power: Local State Networks and Party-State Resilience in Rural China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014), 216p. $50.00 hardback

摘要

In Patronage and Power, Hillman takes up the challenge of identifying and tracing the informal political rules that shape local political behavior in China. Drawing on ten years of field research in a rural county in southwest China, Hillman uses his observations of implementation processes of government initiatives to show that politics in rural China are to a large extent driven by patronage networks. These informal political groups crisscross functional and hierarchical boundaries, penetrating local state and society as well as determining the ways in which formal institutions are understood. Competing for access to state power, patronage networks not only influence how resources are distributed within the local state; but also - considering fragmented relationships of authority and the absence of rule of law - provide a set of unwritten rules that supplement rather than undermine local governmental affairs.