No Money, No Representation: A Case Study of Zeguo Town in China

Jing Ye

Politics & Society, 2018, vol. 46, issue 1, 81-99

Abstract: Authoritarian regimes rely on fiscal resources to build patronage networks. And so it is with China. Budget making is usually dominated by government leaders. However, some local governments in recent years have invited ordinary people to review budgets and even to determine parts of budgets. Why would local leaders make themselves accountable to their constituencies in an authoritarian setting? Why would local governments in China tie their own hands? Using detailed description of a township government, this article argues that fiscal affluence based on land is an important factor for local governments in launching fiscal reform. Richer areas have become more fiscally accountable by opening up new discussion and encouraging citizen participation.

Keywords: local accountability; lands; fiscal affluence; participatory fiscal reform (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0032329218754511 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:polsoc:v:46:y:2018:i:1:p:81-99

DOI: 10.1177/0032329218754511

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Politics & Society
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().