Juan Wang
Associate Professor
Leacock 524, 855 Sherbrooke St. W.
Montreal, Quebec
H3A 2T7
Email: juan.wang2 [at] mcgill.ca
PhD, Johns Hopkins University
My research interests are centered around "the state," its construction, its boundary, its internal dynamics, and its constitutive interactions with "non-state" forces.
Empirically, I focus on the People's Republic of China and examine interactions between different levels of local governments, between different legal and judicial institutions, the issue of agency control, the building of bureaucracy, and the epistemology of the state.
Methodologically, I adopt qualitative and historical research.
Book:
2017. The Sinews of State Power: The Rise and Demise of The Cohesive Local State in Rural China (New York: Oxford University Press)
[Critical Dialogue in Perspectives on Politics with Ralph Thaxton, Vol. 17, Issue 3 (2019), pp. 843-847.]
Articles:
- 2023. "The Changing Role of the Police in the People's Republic of China: 1949-1966." China Law and Society Review, 8: 1-24.
- 2023. "Judicial Relations in Local China" (with Sitao Li), Handbook on Local Governance in China: Structures, Variations, and Innovations. Ceren Ergenc and David S. G. Goodman eds. (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing): 417-428.
- 2023 [Open Access]. "Categorizing People in the New States: A Comparative Study of Communist China and North Korea," (With Kim Jung Eun), Journal of East Asian Studies, 23(2): 185-203.
- 2022 "Institutional Proximity and Judicial Corruption: A Spatial Approach" (with Sida Liu), Governance, 35(2): 633-649.
- 2021 [Open Access] "The Paradigm Shift in the Disciplining of Village Cadres: From Mao to Xi" (with Grace Mou), The China Quarterly.
- 2021. "Law for What? Ideas and Social Control in China and Vietnam" (with Nhu Truong), Problems of Post-Communism, 68(3): 202-215.
- 2020. " 'It's not just about the Divorce:' Law, Politics, and Mediation in Communist China" (with Hongqin Mu), Journal of Comparative Law, 15(2): 160-178.
- 2020. "中华人民共和国成立初期的Y县离婚诉讼研究" (Divorce Litigation in the Early People's Republic of China: The Case of Y County) (with Hongqin Mu), 《法律和社会科学》(Law and Social Sciences)18 (1): 69-93.
- 2019. [Open Access] "Ordering Power under the Party: A Relational Approach to Law and Politics in China" (with Sida Liu), Asian Journal of Law and Society, 6(1): 1-18.
- 2019. "Political Resources and Divergent Court Empowerment: Subnational Comparison in China," (with Wenting Liang), Modern China, 45(6): 629-665.
- 2018. "What's Wrong with Corruption? Messages from Confessions in China," Crime, Law and Social Change, 69(3): 447-463.
- 2015 "Managing Social Stability: The Perspective of a Local Government in China," Journal of East Asian Studies, 15: 1-25.
- 2012. "Shifting Boundaries between the State and Society: Village Cadres as New Activists in Collective Petition," The China Quarterly, 211: 697-717.
- 2009. “The Political Economy of Earmarked Transfers in a State-Designated Poor County in Western China: Central Policies and Local Responses” (with Mingxing Liu, Ran Tao, & Rachel Murphy), The China Quarterly, 200: 973-994.
- 2007. “The Politics of Poverty Mis-targeting in China,” Journal of Chinese Political Science, 12(3): 219-236.
- 2005. “Going beyond Township and Village Enterprises in Rural China,” Journal of Contemporary China, 14(42): 171-181.
Book Reviews
- 2023. Jiwei Qian. The Political Economy of Making and Implementing Social Policy in China (Singapore: Palgrave MacMillan, 2021). The China Journal, 89: 211-212.
- 2021. Rogier Creemers and Susan Trevaskes eds. Law and the Party in China: Ideology and Organisation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021). The China Quarterly, 247: 903-905.
- 2020. Kwai Huang Ng and Xin He, Embedded Courts: Judicial Decision-Making in China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017). Journal of Chinese Political Science, 25:165-166.
- 2018. David J. Bulman, Incentivized Development in China: Leaders, Governance, and Growth in China's Counties (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016). Journal of Chinese Political Science, 23(2):303-304.
- 2011. Lim Tai Wei, Oil in China: From Self-Reliance to Internationalization (Singapore: World Scientific, 2010). The China Journal, 65:221-222.
- 2006. Zhao Suisheng, A Nation-State by Construction: Dynamics of Modern Chinese Nationalism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004). Journal of East Asian Studies, 6:473-476.
Opinion Pieces
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May 23, 2017. “Xi Jinping is ‘Putting the House in Order.’” Monkey Cage, Washington Post.