Legitimacy and Institutional Change: The Case of China
Bruce Gilley*
Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: gilleyb{at}queensu.ca.
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Abstract |
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What explains the nature of institutional change in post-1989 China? Dominant theories of institutional change focus on economic-rationalist, sociopolitical, or historical causes. Yet they have trouble explaining the pattern of institutional change in China. An alternative legitimacy-based perspective is proposed here that provides a more parsimonious and general theory of institutional change for China and potentially for other cases as well.