China’s Governance Puzzle: Enabling Transparency and Participation in a Single-Party State

China is widely viewed as a global powerhouse that has achieved a remarkable economic transformation with little political change. Less well known is that China's leaders have also implemented far‐reaching governance reforms designed to promote government transparency and increase public participation in official policymaking. What are the motivations behind these reforms and what impact are they having? This puzzle lies at the heart of Chinese politics and could dictate China's political trajectory for years to come. This extensive collaborative study not only documents the origins and scope of these reforms across China, but offers the first systematic assessment by quantitatively and qualitatively analyzing the impact of participation and transparency on important governance outcomes. "This illuminating volume changes the way you think about the role of information in China. The authors make a powerful case that, even amid tight political control, transparency is altering China's government, with deep implications for the economic and political future."-Evan Osnos, National Book Award-winning author of Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China. "[This] excellent new book, China's Governance Puzzle, provides the most comprehensive account to date on the effects of the Party's recent efforts to enhance transparency and public participation. "This is a highly rigorous yet very readable study of how authoritarian governance in China works and does not work to achieve policy objectives and maintain domestic stability. The authors bring to bear a rare combination of practical on-the-ground experience and formal academic training to analyze one of the Chinese Communist Party's greatest dilemmas: how to improve governance and bolster state legitimacy by allowing popular opinions to be heard in the policy process without ever hinting that the broad public will or should gain direct control over who governs or how."-Thomas Christensen, Professor of Public and International Affairs and Director of the China and the World Program at Columbia University.