When do autocrats build clean courts? This paper seeks to address this question in a Chinese context. I argue that foreign investors who hold mobile assets and have a strong preference for a fair legal system are major players in pushing Chinese local governments to build clean courts. Chinese...

Ever since the Federalist Papers, there has been a common view that the lower the level of government, the greater is the extent of capture by vested interests. Relying on the analytical framework of relative capture, I challenge this view by arguing that interest groups have different...

Existing theories of state strengthening focus on macro-level factors. We know less about the micro-level incentives for elites to support or oppose state strengthening. I develop an argument in which elites choose between the state and private order institutions (e.g., clans, tribes, or ethnic...

We analyze the conditions under which internal conflict can promote or impede state development, taking imperial China as a laboratory. We develop a novel theoretical framework in which local elites and the central state interact over the provision of internal security. Using new micro-level...

Is the traditional logic by which violent conflict fosters long-run political development universal? To help address this puzzle, this article compares Europe with China. While historical warfare was very common across both units, representative government only flourished in Europe. We suggest...

Autocrats use repression to deter opposition. Are they successful in the long run? I argue that state repression can have long-lasting alienating effects on citizens' political attitudes and coercive effects on their political behavior. I evaluate this proposition by studying the long-term...

I propose an agricultural theory of economic transformation that rice cultivation is conducive to market reform. Using sub-national data from China, I show that market reform is more successful in rice than in wheat regions after controlling for income, policy, geography, and interest groups,...

I offer new data and methods to challenge the conventional wisdom that China's economic growth has been relied on coalitions between local politicians and businesses. Firms in the past 30 years have increasingly built connections with the central government, which is a more powerful and stable...

Rulers' long duration in the medieval period had contributed to the rise of Europe. But what explained premodern ruler duration? While the extant answers focus on formal, political institutions, I examine the role of marriage and inheritance norms in affecting ruler survival. Using a novel...

Are more educated people more likely to participate in politics in authoritarian regimes? Studies of political behavior in American politics suggest that education provides people with more resources, which make people more capable of taking political action—the empowerment hypothesis....