Central Control and Local Discretion in China : Leadership and Implementation during Post-Mao Decollectivization

This book analyses the decollectivization reform in China during the early 1980s in order to gauge the scope of central control and provincial discretion. The volume challenges the notion that the centre's decision to decentralize administrative authority ipso facto produces local discretion properly keyed to local conditions. The findings suggest that bureaucratic careerism plays as crucial a role as local interests and central-local clientilistic networks do.