Karrie J. Koesel, Valerie Bunce, and Jessica Chen Weiss, Eds. Citizens and the State in Authoritarian Regimes: Comparing
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Karrie J. Koesel, Valerie Bunce, and Jessica Chen Weiss, Eds. Citizens and the State in Authoritarian Regimes: Comparing China and Russia (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2020), 340 p. $99.00 hardback; $31.95 paperback Natalia Forrat 1 Accepted: 29 September 2020/ # Journal of Chinese Political Science/Association of Chinese Political Studies 2020
The edited volume Citizens and the State in Authoritarian Regimes is a very rich and much needed collection of studies discussing state-society relations in Russia and China. The chapters address various topics, which speak well to each other: the shift in governance practices from mostly managerial and growth-oriented to driven by tighter political control in China; an increase in institutionalized protest channels accompanied by diminished opportunities for contentious participation under Xi Jinping; the strategies of the Russian and Chinese governments to prevent international influences, including the diffusion of protests from abroad, as well as their ways to control the public discourse through the media and education; people’s motivations to support Vladimir Putin and to work for the state; and the ways the Russian and Chinese political regimes deal with the challenges posed by globalization. All the chapters are very rich empirically and present an excellent collection of the most recent scholarship on state-society relations in the two countries. The value of the volume, however, is not only in its empirical richness. It is also very important theoretically to compare Russia and China. Before this volume, only a few studies did it. Russia and China are vast and complex countries, which require different regional expertise to make an informed comparison. At the same time, such comparison is crucial for advancing our knowledge about the strengths and vulnerabilities of authoritarian regimes. Any comparison balances similarity and difference. We do not want to compare apples to oranges, but there is little point in comparing two identical apples either. We can focus our analysis on why the two countries, which are otherwise similar, differ in important respects. Or we can focus it on why the two countries, which are different in important ways, still exhibit similar political and social patterns. The volume does a
* Natalia Forrat [email protected]
1
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
N. Forrat
very good job theorizing the difference between China and Russia: the argument developed in the introduction as well as throughout the book about the different historical paths of the two countries since the 1980s makes perfect sense. At the same time, the book pays less attention to the analytic potential of the similarity of Russia and China, which, in my opinion, may be more important for advancing our knowledge about authoritarianism. The last comment is informed by my own work on state-society relations in Russia, which focuses on the state as an authority that unites people and different social groups into one collective. I see many of the empirical
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