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The turbulent year of 2011 has brought the appearance of mass popular unrest and the collapse of long lived autocratic regimes in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and possibly Syria. The sudden and unanticipated fall of these regimes - often thought of as exemplars of authoritarian resilience - has brought much of the conventional wisdom on the durability and vulnerability of nondemocratic regimes into question. This book seeks to advance the existing literature by treating the autocratic state not as a unitary actor characterized by strength or weakness but rather as a structure or terrain that can alte

This article conducts an investigation into Yunnan province to study the risks and opportunities associated with two institutional changes that have reshaped contemporary China: the decentralisation of power from the centre to provinces and the emerging agency of provinces in China's increasingly multilayered foreign policy. These changes have enabled Yunnan to develop a bridgehead strategy that positions the province as an economic corridor to the markets of Southeast Asia. While this has succeeded in fostering economic development, it has also created a complex set of transnational links that has contributed to the obstruction of central supervision, enabling local leaders to engage in regionalised corruption on a scale that has outpaced other Chinese provinces. (China/GIGA)

This article investigates why a growing number of wealthy Chinese, the primary beneficiaries of China's economic rise, have opted to exit China, through both capital flight and emigration, over the last decade, instead of using voice, engaging the political process, and leveraging their power and influence to effect policy change.

This article takes a comparative look at two historically and geographically interconnected waves of large-scale unrest: the colour revolutions of the post-communist region during the 2000s and the Arab uprisings of 2011. From this vantage point, it considers the power of alternative approaches in explaining the resilience or breakdown of autocratic regimes in the face of exogenously inspired protests. These explanations centre on the destabilizing impact of sudden economic downturns, the varied resilience of authoritarian subtypes, linkages to the outside world, the advantages of resource wealth and the threats posed by leadership successions. Drawing a deliberate comparison between these two waves of contention reveals several findings: first, structural factors such as resource wealth, monarchical political organization and weak political links to the outside made autocrats more resilient in the face of regional protest waves. Second, regimes temporarily undergoing leadership transitions were more vulnerable amidst regional waves.

AbstractBy looking at the case of the 2011 Wukan rebellion in Guangdong Province, the following article explores the role played by foreign media in influencing the protest's ultimate outcome: an intervention from above by provincial authorities in favour of the villagers. Placing Wukan into a four-level model incorporating local, provincial, national, and international dimensions, this article considers how Wukan might serve as a model for contention that may influence future acts of popular protest in China in the digital age. It suggests that while appealing directly to foreign media can help claimants increase their leverage over local officials and prompt interventions from above, such actions are likely to modify and accelerate, but not fundamentally transform, existing patterns of localized, community-specific acts of contention seen earlier in the Reform Era.

Following the collapse of long-lived dictatorships in Tunisia and Egypt in early 2011, many analysts have turned their attention to China to identify possible stirrings of revolution. Of course, whereas efforts spiraled into revolutionary outcomes in the Middle East and North Africa, the Chinese Jasmine Revolution stimulated little domestic interest and failed to materialize into a popular movement. Beginning with the cases of Egypt and Tunisia, this article critically examines recent literature identifying the causes of the 2011 Arab Spring revolutions to develop several hypotheses on the sources of regime vulnerability in these countries and considers their applicability in explaining the exceptional resilience of single-party rule in China.

The turbulent year of 2011 has brought the appearance of mass popular unrest and the collapse of long lived autocratic regimes in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and possibly Syria. The sudden and unanticipated fall of these regimes - often thought of as exemplars of authoritarian resilience - has brought much of the conventional wisdom on the durability and vulnerability of nondemocratic regimes into question. This book seeks to advance the existing literature by treating the autocratic state not as a unitary actor characterized by strength or weakness but rather as a structure or terrain that can alternatively inhibit or facilitate the appearance of national level forms of protests. In the mode of the Arab Spring, the color revolutions of the former Soviet Union, and the people power movement of the Philippines, such movements overcome the daunting impediments presented by autocrats, appeal to likeminded counterparts across society, and overwhelm the ability of regimes to maintain order. Conversely, in other settings, such as contemporary China, decentralized state structures provide an inhospitable environment for national-level protest, leading collective actors to opt for more local and parochial forms of contention. This outcome produces paradoxical situations, such as in the PRC, where protests are frequent but national-level mobilization and coordination is absent