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‘Decentralization’ as a concept and topic of study in Political Science has always been a challenging task. If one takes into account a study of decentralization and its relation with the role and nature of the state and its impact on relations of authority, the subject becomes all the more intriguing. No wonder very few have ventured to do research on these lines. As the title of the book suggests, this book is about ‘decentralization’ and its impact on state and ‘relations of authority’ in China. In this book the author has tried to explore the relations between state, authority and decentralization in the post- First Five Year Plan in China, from 1956 till the period 1992. He has used concepts like ‘state capacity’ and ‘political capacity’ to examine the impact of fiscal decentralization in China, and goes on to argue that irrespective of the developmental strategies and changes in the leadership, the Chinese state’s capacity and its ‘political capacity’ have always been unquestionable. The author has made a serious endeavour to highlight the fact that Maoist era and the Dengist era, despite having various points of departure have also many continuities, the most important one being the abiding faith of the leadership on the ‘one party rule’. The author argues how ‘decentralization’ was considered as a panacea to the evils of centralization inspired by the Soviet model of development under the auspices of the FFYP but both the eras witnessed unanticipated outcomes. Though the two eras witnessed the phenomenon of decentralization, the nature and content of decentralization and the means to achieve it were different. However in both the eras the Chinese leadership in no uncertain terms showed that when it comes to compromise on ‘state capacity’ and ‘political capacity’ there would be no compromise. But the way in which this objective was to be attained was strikingly dissimilar in both the eras. The book also contains some of the interesting ‘state versus market’ debates that took place in the party and academic circles in China during the Maoist and the Dengist Eras.
ISBN - 8178711559
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Pages : 330
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