Organization Of The Volume

The volume begins with analyses that are national in scope. David M. Lampton considers systematically the conditions that structure bargaining behavior, and Susan Shirk analyzes overall reform strategy and implementation. In their focus on the Center, Carol Lee Hamrin examines the evolution, structure, and politics of the "leading groups" headed by the top leaders, and Nina Halpern explicates the impact on policy process of the development of think tanks at the Center.

Four authors then take up various bureaucratic functional clusters:

Jonathan Pollack on the military; Lynn Paine on the educational system; Melanie Manion on the personnel system; and Barry Naughton on the economic system. Finally, three authors focus specifically on subnational levels of the system: Paul Schroeder on the provincial level; Andrew Walder on the municipal level; and David Zweig on county level and below in the countryside.

Many of the "functional" chapters in fact deal with both national and local levels, and each of the last three examines the politics and policy process of localities in their relationship to other levels of the political system. Thus, although the chapters are arranged to march "down" the national governing hierarchy, the actual relationships among these chapters are more complex than may appear on the surface. In this tension between orderly appearance and complex reality, this volume imitates the bureaucratic system about which it is written.