Sinews of State Power

<em>The Sinews of State Power</em> seeks to explain why rural China has been so unstable since 2000 despite numerous national reforms. Using original fieldwork it traces the rise and demise of cohesive local states in rural China since the Maoist era. It shows that the county township and village levels of government when in alliance have facilitated economic growth and caused social grievances. However national reforms redressing local deviation together with individual responses from each level of administration have dismantled elite alliances and consequentially undermined the extractive coercive and responsive capacity of the state. This book forms dialogue with two fields of inquiry in China studies and comparative politics. First researches on farmer protest often either focus on farmers' grievances organizations and strategies or examine responses from the state as a uniform entity. This book instead highlights the anthropology of the state by looking into elite cohesion across administrative levels that determines the exercise of state capacity. Second studies of regime stability or endurance have stressed holistic factors such as institutional adaptability political culture or epidemic corruption. <em>The Sinews of State Power</em> instead revisits the fundamental components of a capable government - a coherent and robust local leadership that enables the function of a state.<br>