Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This article inquires grassroots state control in contemporary rural China that is experiencing political democratization and the emerging open market, by understanding the network-based governance in Chu Village. I have found that the villagers, stratified into different groups in the reforms, have developed three different patterns of networks with the village Party secretary embodying the local state: the Network of Mutual Respect, the Network of Interdependency, and the Distant Network. The Party secretary takes on distinctive roles in each pattern to maintain and utilize the networks, through which villagers’ uprisings are largely prevented and the state goal of social stability is delicately achieved. The post-socialist conditions have diversified the dependent-clientelist state control in socialist Chinese villages and transformed the cadre-villager network into heterogeneous patterns; however, the core status of interpersonal network in state penetration remains intact in the village under democratization.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In order to achieve the auspicious United Nations’ goal of primary education for all children by 2015, it is grimly apparent that girls will start from behind in many countries and regions of the world. Multiple United Nations agencies launched robust “girls-to-school” campaigns in connection with World Bank funding, national governments and local non-governmental organizations to dramatically increase girls’ participation in school. The relative dearth of scholarly research and publishing on girls’ education signals multiple foundational questions. What are the lived experiences these girls encounter after participating in global educational initiatives? Do the girls achieve the successes and dreams that education promises? This paper explores the experiences of girls in three countries (Turkey, Tanzania and Turkmenistan) that suggest rural girls bump into tensions between the village lives of the past and the urban choices, touched by globalization, which have become possible in their futures. Through a feminist critique and a cultural foundations lens, broad questions about consequences, including unintended ones, of girls-to-school initiatives are brought to the surface. Implications for additional studies will be drawn for educators to develop programs that ease the transition between the two worlds village girls must now negotiate.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: I analyze original data collected in 2008 in rural Malawi to assess the role of village headmen in providing the local implementation of the global AIDS intervention. In Malawi, the highest authority in a village is a headman, and headmen hold considerable power in rural areas, where 80% of Malawi's population resides. Because in many of Malawi's rural villages there are few public or government-supported services or infrastructure, the local headman plays an important role in shaping organization and mobilization to meet the village's needs. In this paper, I use survey data to describe the headmen and their villages and open-ended interviews to characterize the role of headmen in development interventions. Despite the great priority given to HIV/AIDS interventions in the global community, village headmen give low priority to HIV/AIDS services when posited against other public services. The other pressing concerns facing headmen paired with the limited resources at their disposal constrains their ability to effectively implement HIV/AIDS interventions. I utilize the headmen data to discuss the implications of policy preference misalignment in the global AIDS intervention.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The paper will present the basic empirical as well as theoretical assumptions for analysing the two markedly different socio-economic trajectories of those who migrated to Sweden and those who migrated within Greece and the different fates of the children of the two groups of migrants.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: From the perspective of good governance, a competitive election is considered better than a non-competitive election. Competition will bring uncertainty of an election result. Each candidate, who assumes that they will have a chance to win, will outline their policy positions in the campaign to sway voters and win the election. Thus, candidates will be held accountable to voters for their policy positions. In other words, competition of an election will give each candidate an incentive to campaign and candidates will be held accountable to the electorate through campaigning.
Throughout my field research in China’s rural areas, I found the roles and functions of elections were very different from what I imagined. My game-theoretic analysis explores the effects of competitive elections on their outcomes. This is a significant question because previous studies tend to assume that competitive elections have a positive effect on elected cadres’ accountability; in short, they assume that competitive elections are better than non-competitive ones. I challenge this assumption. My attempt is supported by many of the empirical findings from China’s village elections, which suggest (1) competitive elections are often corrupt; (2) vote-buying candidates are often elected by competitive and corrupt elections; and (3) candidates elected by non-competitive elections are often not corrupt and provide public goods. My comparative-static analysis shows logic of how, given the institutional setting of village elections and unique characteristics of the village community, a vote-buying candidate is more likely to win if an election is competitive, and a good cadre is elected by a non-competitive election.
The size of a village, the unit of elections, is very small and the laws regulating vote-buying are poorly enforced through they formally stipulate severe punishment. Therefore, incorporating these conditions, the model’s comparative-static analysis implies that competitive elections tend to be corrupt and non-corrupt elections tend to be non-competitive.