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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
From Sea Elections to State Control: China's Unfinished Democratic Experiments and the Logic of Top-Down Governance

From Sea Elections to State Control: China's Unfinished Democratic Experiments and the Logic of Top-Down Governance

Lee, Sam

Hardcover

Series: Challenges to Democracy in the 21st Century

General Political Science

PREORDER - Expected ship date October 28, 2026

ISBN10: 3032237424
ISBN13: 9783032237422
Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
Published: Oct 28 2026
Pages: 359
Language: English
This book examines China's grassroots electoral experiments and their transformation into instruments of centralized political control. It provides the first comprehensive, historically grounded analysis of village, township, and consultative elections from the 1980s to the present.

Tracing the rise of sea elections and their gradual institutional containment, the book shows how limited democratic practices emerged within a one-party system and were later restructured to reinforce state authority. It introduces the concept of top-down governance logic to explain how electoral participation can coexist with authoritarian resilience. Combining long-term field research, archival materials, and comparative political analysis, the book situates China's experience within broader debates on authoritarian governance, democratic experimentation, political reform, and adaptive legitimacy. It demonstrates how elections in China functioned simultaneously as experiments in participation and mechanisms of political consolidation.

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General Political Science

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