The Authoritarian Commons

Shitong Qiao is is Professor of Law and Ken Young-Gak Yun and Jinah Park Yun Research Scholar at Duke University. He also taught property and comparative law at the University of Hong Kong and New York University and was Law and Public Affairs Fellow at Princeton University. He received his law degrees from Wuhan (LLB), Peking (MPhil) and Yale (LLM and JSD). He has published numerous articles in the top Chinese and US law journals and a prize-winning book about law and marketization, Chinese Small Property: The Co-Evolution of Law and Social Norms (Cambridge University Press, 2017).

Introduction; Part I. Theory: 1. Defining the authoritarian commons; 2. Neighborhood democratization; Part II. A Tale of Three Cities: 3 The three styles of authoritarianism; 4. Rule of law for democracy; 5. Property: a political right, social right, or legal right?; Part III. Benefits and Risks: 6. The origin of self-governed communities in authoritarian cities; 7. Neighborhood governance during China's COVID lockdowns; 8. Contesting party leadership; 9. Associations beyond neighborhoods and property; Conclusion: democracy in China?; Appendix I. Summary of research methods; Appendix II. Survey data and analysis.