Resources

Methodological resources and reading lists for research

Methodological Resources

Reading List on Government Responsiveness

See the “Responsiveness” list

  1. Putnam, Robert D. 1993. Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
  2. O’Brien, Kevin J., and Lianjiang Li. 2006. Rightful Resistance in Rural China. New York: Cambridge University Press.
  3. Chen, Xi. 2009. “The Power of ‘Troublemaking’: Protest Tactics and Their Efficacy in China.” Comparative Politics 41 (4): 451–71. https://doi.org/10.5129/001041509X12911362972557.
  4. Chen, Xi. 2012. Social Protest and Contentious Authoritarianism in China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  5. King, Gary, Jennifer Pan, and Margaret E. Roberts. 2013. “How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression.” American Political Science Review 107 (2): 326–43. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055413000014.
  6. Su, Zheng, and Tianguang Meng. 2016. “Selective Responsiveness: Online Public Demands and Government Responsiveness in Authoritarian China.” Social Science Research 59: 52–67.
  7. Chen, Jidong, Jennifer Pan, and Yiqing Xu. 2016. “Sources of Authoritarian Responsiveness: A Field Experiment in China.” American Journal of Political Science 60 (2): 383–400. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12207.
  8. Meng, Tianguang, Jennifer Pan, and Ping Yang. 2017. “Conditional Receptivity to Citizen Participation: Evidence from a Survey Experiment in China.” Comparative Political Studies 50 (4): 399–433. https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414014556212.
  9. Chen, Jidong, and Yiqing Xu. 2017. “Why Do Authoritarian Regimes Allow Citizens to Voice Opinions Publicly?” The Journal of Politics 79 (3): 792–803. https://doi.org/10.1086/690303.
  10. Distelhorst, Greg, and Yue Hou. 2017. “Constituency Service Under Nondemocratic Rule: Evidence from China.” The Journal of Politics 79 (3): 1024–40. https://doi.org/10.1086/690948.
  11. Pan, Jennifer, and Kaiping Chen. 2018. “Concealing Corruption: How Chinese Officials Distort Upward Reporting of Online Grievances.” American Political Science Review 112 (3): 602–20. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055418000205.
  12. Cai, Yongshun, and Titi Zhou. 2019. “Online Political Participation in China: Local Government and Differentiated Response.” The China Quarterly 238 (June): 331–52. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741019000055.
  13. Jiang, Junyan, Tianguang Meng, and Qing Zhang. 2019. “From Internet to Social Safety Net: The Policy Consequences of Online Participation in China.” Governance 32 (3): 531–546.
  14. Jiang, Junyan, and Yu Zeng. 2020. “Countering Capture: Elite Networks and Government Responsiveness in China’s Land Market Reform.” The Journal of Politics 82 (1): 13–28. https://doi.org/10.1086/705595.
  15. Gueorguiev, Dimitar D. 2022. Retrofitting Leninism: Participation Without Democracy in China. New York: Oxford University Press.
  16. Zeng, Yu, Junyan Jiang, Jie Li, and Christian Göbel. 2023. “The Rise of Grassroots Civil Society Under One-Party Rule: The Case of China’s Homeowner Associations.” World Politics 75 (3): 608–46. https://doi.org/10.1353/wp.2023.a900714.
  17. Wang, Howard H., Edmund W. Cheng, Xi Chen, and Hai Liang. 2024. “How Institutionalized Feedback Works: Online Citizen Complaints and Local Government Responsiveness in China.” Governance, 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1111/gove.12907.

Reading List on Chinese Politics and Public Policies

See the "Literature" list

  1. O’Brien, Kevin J., and Lianjiang Li. 2006. Rightful Resistance in Rural China. New York: Cambridge University Press.
  2. Landry, Pierre F. 2008. Decentralized Authoritarianism in China: The Communist Party’s Control of Local Elites in the Post-Mao Era. New York: Cambridge University Press.
  3. Cai, Yongshun. 2010. Collective Resistance in China: Why Popular Protests Succeed or Fail. Studies of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press.
  4. Chen, Xi. 2012. Social Protest and Contentious Authoritarianism in China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  5. Shih, Victor, Christopher Adolph, and Mingxing Liu. 2012. “Getting Ahead in the Communist Party: Explaining the Advancement of Central Committee Members in China.” American Political Science Review 106 (1): 166–87. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055411000566.
  6. Li, Lianjiang, Mingxing Liu, and Kevin J. O’Brien. 2012. “Petitioning Beijing: The High Tide of 2003–2006.” The China Quarterly 210 (June): 313–34. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741012000227.
  7. Lü, Xiaobo, and Pierre F. Landry. 2014. “Show Me the Money: Interjurisdiction Political Competition and Fiscal Extraction in China.” American Political Science Review 108 (3): 706–22. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055414000252.
  8. Truex, Rory. 2014. “The Returns to Office in a ‘Rubber Stamp’ Parliament.” American Political Science Review 108 (2): 235–51. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055414000112.
  9. Wang, Yuhua, and Carl Minzner. 2015. “The Rise of the Chinese Security State.” The China Quarterly 222 (June): 339–59. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741015000430.
  10. Wang, Yuhua. 2015. Tying the Autocrat’s Hands: The Rise of the Rule of Law in China. New York: Cambridge University Press.
  11. Chen, Jidong, Jennifer Pan, and Yiqing Xu. 2016. “Sources of Authoritarian Responsiveness: A Field Experiment in China.” American Journal of Political Science 60 (2): 383–400. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12207.
  12. Cheng, Edmund W. 2016. “Street Politics in a Hybrid Regime: The Diffusion of Political Activism in Post-Colonial Hong Kong.” The China Quarterly 226 (June): 383–406. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741016000394.
  13. Chen, Xi. 2017. “Elitism and Exclusion in Mass Protest: Privatization, Resistance, and State Domination in China.” Comparative Political Studies 50 (7): 908–34. https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414016655532.
  14. Meng, Tianguang, Jennifer Pan, and Ping Yang. 2017. “Conditional Receptivity to Citizen Participation: Evidence from a Survey Experiment in China.” Comparative Political Studies 50 (4): 399–433. https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414014556212.
  15. Yuen, Samson, and Edmund W. Cheng. 2017. “Neither Repression nor Concession? A Regime’s Attrition Against Mass Protests.” Political Studies 65 (3): 611–30. https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321716674024.
  16. Truex, Rory. 2017. “Consultative Authoritarianism and Its Limits.” Comparative Political Studies 50 (3): 329–61. https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414014534196.
  17. Distelhorst, Greg, and Yue Hou. 2017. “Constituency Service Under Nondemocratic Rule: Evidence from China.” The Journal of Politics 79 (3): 1024–40. https://doi.org/10.1086/690948.
  18. Landry, Pierre F., Xiaobo Lü, and Haiyan Duan. 2018. “Does Performance Matter? Evaluating Political Selection Along the Chinese Administrative Ladder.” Comparative Political Studies 51 (8): 1074–1105. https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414017730078.
  19. Pan, Jennifer, and Yiqing Xu. 2018. “China’s Ideological Spectrum.” The Journal of Politics 80 (1): 254–73. https://doi.org/10.1086/694255.
  20. Jiang, Junyan. 2018. “Making Bureaucracy Work: Patronage Networks, Performance Incentives, and Economic Development in China.” American Journal of Political Science 62 (4): 982–99. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12394.
  21. Jiang, Junyan, Tianguang Meng, and Qing Zhang. 2019. “From Internet to Social Safety Net: The Policy Consequences of Online Participation in China.” Governance 32 (3): 531–46. https://doi.org/10.1111/gove.12391.
  22. Zhang, Han, and Jennifer Pan. 2019. “CASM: A Deep-Learning Approach for Identifying Collective Action Events with Text and Image Data from Social Media.” Sociological Methodology 49 (1): 1–57. https://doi.org/10.1177/0081175019860244.
  23. Chen, Sicheng, Tom Christensen, and Liang Ma. 2019. “Competing for Father’s Love? The Politics of Central Government Agency Termination in China.” Governance 32 (4): 761–77. https://doi.org/10.1111/gove.12405.
  24. Pan, Jennifer. 2020. Welfare for Autocrats: How Social Assistance in China Cares for Its Rulers. New York: Oxford University Press.
  25. Jiang, Junyan, and Yu Zeng. 2020. “Countering Capture: Elite Networks and Government Responsiveness in China’s Land Market Reform.” The Journal of Politics 82 (1): 13–28. https://doi.org/10.1086/705595.
  26. Jiang, Junyan, and Zhaotian Luo. 2021. “Leadership Styles and Political Survival of Chinese Communist Party Elites.” The Journal of Politics 83 (2): 777–82. https://doi.org/10.1086/710144.
  27. Liang, Hai, and Francis L.F. Lee. 2021. “Opinion Leadership in a Leaderless Movement: Discussion of the Anti-Extradition Bill Movement in the ‘LIHKG’ Web Forum.” Social Movement Studies 22 (5–6): 670–88. https://doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2021.1989294.
  28. Göbel, Christian. 2021. “The Political Logic of Protest Repression in China.” Journal of Contemporary China 30 (128): 169–85. https://doi.org/10.1080/10670564.2020.1790897.
  29. Li, Lianjiang. 2022. “Decoding Political Trust in China: A Machine Learning Analysis.” The China Quarterly 249 (March): 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741021001077.
  30. Zhou, Xueguang. 2022. “The Logic of Governance in China: An Organizational Approach.” Cambridge University Press doi:10.1017/9781009159418.
  31. Zhan, Jing Vivian. 2022. China’s Contained Resource Curse: How Minerals Shape State-Capital-Labor Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  32. Cheng, Edmund W., Francis L.F. Lee, Samson Yuen, and Gary Tang. 2022. “Total Mobilization from Below: Hong Kong’s Freedom Summer.” The China Quarterly 251 (September): 629–59. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741022000236.
  33. Wang, Yuhua. 2022. The Rise and Fall of Imperial China: The Social Origins of State Development. Princeton Studies in Contemporary China Ser, v. 17. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  34. Dimitrov, Martin K. 2023. Dictatorship and Information: Authoritarian Regime Resilience in Communist Europe and China. New York: Oxford University Press.
  35. Mattingly, Daniel C. 2024. “How the Party Commands the Gun: The Foreign-Domestic Threat Dilemma in China.” American Journal of Political Science 68 (1): 227–42.
  36. Mattingly, Daniel, Trevor Incerti, Changwook Ju, Colin Moreshead, Seiki Tanaka, and Hikaru Yamagishi. 2024. “Chinese State Media Persuades a Global Audience That the ‘China Model’ Is Superior: Evidence from a 19‐Country Experiment.” American Journal of Political Science, July. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12887.
  37. Cheng, E. W., & Yuen, S. (2025). The Making of Leaderful Mobilization: Power and Contention in Hong Kong. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009445832

Recognized Journals (Reputation‑based)

See the "Journal" list

Note: The more asterisks (*) a journal has, the more frequently I read it.

Top 5 in Economics

Top 5 in Political Science

Other Excellent Journals for Political Scientists

Tops in Public Administration

Tops in Sociology

Tops in Communication

Tops in Marketing

Tops in General Social Science

Other Great Journals

  • International Organization (TOP 1 in International Realtions)
  • International Security
  • International Studies Quarterly
  • Cities
  • American Historical Review
  • History and Theory
  • Government Information Quarterly (GIQ)
  • European Journal of International Relations
  • European Journal of Political Research
  • Computers in Human Behavior (Focuses on the impact of technology on human behavior and society)
  • Urban Studies (A leading journal in urban studies, governance, and social policy)
  • Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis (JCPA) (A key journal for comparative research in public policy and administration)
  • Journal of Urban Affairs (Interdisciplinary urban studies)
  • Global Environmental Politics
  • Environmental Politics (Interdisciplinary journal at the intersection of environmental studies and political science)
  • Economic Journal (EJ)
  • Journal of Development Economics (JDE)
  • Population and Development Review (PDR)

Note:

This list is not authoritative and it is only intended as a reference for identifying journals of interest across multiple disciplines.

Academic journal preferences vary widely among individuals, and even a single individual's preferences may shift over time as they gain more experience in reading, researching, and publishing.

HK Academic Positions

HKU

CUHK

HKUST

HKUST (Guangzhou)

City University of Hong Kong

PolyU

Hong Kong Baptist University

Lingnan University

Education University of Hong Kong

Macau U