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This study intends to enrich the literature of comparative studies on growth machine and urban regime through contextualized analyses of growth politics in Shanghai, China. An analytical framework is developed to advance our understanding of the variation of growth politics in a different urban setting. In particular, this study contends that local government's dual goals of promoting economic growth and managing development-related conflicts are the key to making sense of growth politics in Shanghai. This specific configuration of institutions suggests that growth coalition has to extend itself spatially into neighborhood level and temporally into postdevelopment phase to sustain urban growth. This extension requires pro-growth players to exploit infrastructural power to contain homeowners' activism. This research calls for attention to the nexus between economic and political dimensions of urban growth, a refined conceptualization of local states, and the interaction between pro-growth and antigrowth forces which shapes the forms and dynamics of urban regime.

This study aims to investigate Weibo users' political ideologies in China. It argues that a left-right spectrum cannot adequately depict the ideological landscape, and proposes a typological framework to guide the analysis of competing ideologies. Based on a sample of 3440 Weibo users, this article uses latent class model to identify sub-types of ideologues. It discerns five ideological groups, namely Maoists, regime defenders, full-fledged liberals, economic liberals, and political liberals, as well as one politically silent group. The results show that liberal leaning Weibo users are not a homogeneous group, and should not be holistically conceived as regime challengers in opposition to regime defenders. To a certain degree, economic liberals are more similar to regime defenders than Maoists, and this can be better understood from a typological perspective than a spectrum perspective. This article concludes with a discussion on the political implications of the findings. (J Contemp China/GIGA)

While the literature on Chinese environmental politics tends to examine NGO actions and popular protests as two separate facets of environmental activism, such a tendency runs the risk of missing the linkages that have begun to emerge among environmental forces. This new phenomenon is highlighted with a case study of local opposition against the siting of an oil refining plant in Kunming through the lens of political opportunity theory. Two forms of linkages are identified, namely the linkages between local communities and local NGOs and the linkages between local and supra-local NGOs. These linkages emerged and developed through dynamic interactions between political opportunities and contentious actions. Citizen-initiated protests in Kunming pressured the local government to adopt a receptive attitude for the purpose of maintaining social stability, which paradoxically expanded political opportunities for NGO participation. The structural political environment of the locality indirectly facilitated collaboration between local and supra-local environmental NGOs by activating prior social networks among key NGO members. The analysis of the dynamic linkages among environmental forces reflects the prospects of a broader environmental movement and its relation to political contexts. (J Contemp China/GIGA)

This edited volume advances our understanding of urban activism beyond the social movement theorization dominated by thesis of political opportunity structure and resource mobilization, as well as by research based on experience from the global north. Covering a diversity of urban actions from a broad range of countries in both hemispheres as well as the global north and global south, this unique collection notably focuses on non-institutionalised or localised urban actions that have the potential to bring about radical structural transformation of the urban system and also addresses actions in authoritarian regimes that are too sensitive to call themselves "movement". It addresses localized issues cut off from international movements such as collective consumption issues, like clean water, basic shelter, actions against displacement or proper venues for street vendors, and argues that the integration of the actions in cities in the global south with the specificity of their local social and political environment is as pivotal as their connection with global movement networks or international NGOs. A key read for researchers and policy makers cutting across the fields of urban sociology, political science, public policy, geography, regional studies and housing studies, this text provides an interdisciplinary and international perspective on 21st century urban activism in the global north and south