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Ecologist John Read travelled the world consulting cat experts and collating the most recent science. He balances the allure of indoor cats with the animal welfare and conservation issues they create when allowed to roam. He also presents solutions, from breeding ideal indoor pet cats to developing humane and targeted tools to control feral cats.

During the Cold War, comparisons between the Soviet-led state-socialist bloc and democracies sparked scholarly controversy. Today, with China assuming the mantle of the most significant nondemocratic regime model, and with scholars pursuing innovative comparisons between China and other political systems (Duara and Perry 2018; Tsai 2016; Zhang 2013), it behooves us to revisit some of the questions that such comparisons pose. Specifically, when is it reasonable to pursue comparisons, what is their purpose, and what do they entail? In this short piece, I will address only some of the issues involved.

Theories of civil society set high expectations for grassroots associations, claiming that they school citizens in democracy and constrain powerful institutions. But when do real-life organizations actually live up to this billing? Homeowner organizations in the United States and elsewhere have sparked debate among political scientists, criticized by some as nonparticipatory and harmful to the overall polity and defended by others as benign manifestations of local self-governance. With this as a backdrop, China's emerging homeowner groups are used as a testing ground for exploring variation in three criteria of performance: self-organization, participation, and the exercising of power. Comparisons are drawn cross-nationally, among 23 cases in four Chinese cities and over time within neighborhoods. The article puts forward several factors affecting the properties of grassroots groups, highlighting the role of conflict, the political-legal environment, and collective action problems in shaping the way they engage their members and take political action. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright 2008.]

Theories of civil society set high expectations for grassroots associations, claiming that they school citizens in democracy and constrain powerful institutions. But when do real-life organizations actually live up to this billing? Homeowner organizations in the United States and elsewhere have sparked debate among political scientists, criticized by some as nonparticipatory and harmful to the overall polity and defended by others as benign manifestations of local self-governance. With this as a backdrop, China's emerging homeowner groups are used as a testing ground for exploring variation in three criteria of performance: self-organization, participation, and the exercising of power. Comparisons are drawn cross-nationally, among 23 cases in four Chinese cities and over time within neighborhoods. The article puts forward several factors affecting the properties of grassroots groups, highlighting the role of conflict, the political—legal environment, and collective action problems in shaping the way they engage their members and take political action.