Institutions and institutional change in China

Booknews

Constructs an alternative conceptual framework within to examine the issues of development, modernization, and post-modernity in comparative politics and international political economy. Applies the analytical model to institutional continuity and change in contemporary China, especially the peculiar institutional premodernity and the profound state-led modernization. Among other conclusions, finds that China has had a super-stable and undifferentiated domestic organizational structure based on a family-like state for centuries, including most of the communist era. Predicts that the process of modernization may therefore be unusual, but the final outcome probably about the same as elsewhere. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.