当代中国社会治理与政策创新

师资课程

首页师资课程 2025年全球化与中国

当代中国社会治理与政策创新

课程教师

Timothy Hildebrandt

教师简介

Timothy Hildebrandt is an Associate Professor of Social Policy and Development at the London School of Economics. Trained as a political scientist and Sinologist, his mixed methods research on state-society relations in China, social organization development, political behavior, and social policy has been featured in numerous journals including Development and Change, Democratization, Journal of Contemporary China, Journal of Civil Society, Review of International Studies, Voluntas, among many others; he is also author of Social Organizations and the Authoritarian State in China (Cambridge University Press, 2013). Dr Hildebrandt is co-editor of The China Quarterly, on the editorial board of Global Public Policy and Governance, and on the governing council of the LSE-Fudan Research Centre for Global Public Policy. He regularly appears in international news media, including BBC, CNN, and The Guardian among others.

课程内容

China’s meteoric rise as an economic superpower has improved the well-being of most its citizens. But development has also brought with it a number of new challenges, affecting some more than others and heightening the inherent difficulties that come with managing any society with diverse interests and needs. To address complex social, economic, and environmental problems, China has cultivated a long history of developing, testing, and implementing a wide range of macro and micro level policy innovations.

The course uses tried and tested innovations, ‘small state, big society’ and the newer Social Credit system, as lenses through which students explore key questions: How do states organize and manage societies? Why are some policy innovations employed over others? How can states, societies, and markets work in cooperation to address pressing social problems? How successful are these schemes, and how might they differently affect particular groups? And, how can we anticipate (and potentially minimise) the unintended effects of planned social governance policies?

The first half of the course historically contextualises ‘small state, big society,’ using it as a case study to examine key actors in social management: the decentralised state, bureaucrats, and local politics; NGOs and social organisations; the family as fundamental unit of society; and the market. The second half introduces the latest policy innovation in China, the Social Credit system—a private sector-inspired innovation (e.g., think Uber ratings) in which citizens are awarded points for good behaviour and deducted for bad, with overall goals of making citizens ‘better’ and governance easier. In the following days, we highlight some key areas that Social Credit is designed to improve. In so doing, we also examine potential unintended consequences.

Throughout the course, we draw upon a number of empirical examples including demographic challenges, family planning policies, elder care, health care, environmental protection, gender, and sexuality—paying particular attention to the most vulnerable in society, and those who are frequently ‘unseen’ by states in social management schemes. This course draws upon literature from a variety of fields, including political science, sociology, economics, public health, psychology, and social policy. Finally, illustrative of my commitment to research-led teaching, I will draw upon my past research into state-society relations and NGO development, as well my ongoing research into the effect of policy innovations like Social Credit on notions of citizenship, trust, and loyalty in China.

预期目标

Students will:

Understand the concepts social management and policy innovation generally, and their application to China particularly.
Appreciate the difficulty in managing diverse societies, and the costs and benefits that come with policy innovations designed to improve it.
Learn about the wide variety of actors involved in social management, across sectors, in both formal an informal spheres.
Understand how innovations have affected various groups in society, and affected social problems themselves, whether intended or not.
Apply these understandings to analyse newly emerging policy innovations and theorising the (un)intended effects they could have in a number of important areas.

课程安排

Lecture	Topic (2.5 teaching hours)
1	Day 1: Introduction: social management, policy innovation, & how states manage societies
2	Day 2: ‘Small state, big society’: the Chinese state under decentralisation
3	Day 3: NGOs and GONGOs: social organisation growth and hybridization
4	Day 4: De-familisation and re-familisation: the changing use of the family in policy innovation
5	Day 5: Markets and the private sector: from rival to partner
6	Day 6: The roots (and early verdict) on the Social Credit scheme
7	Day 7: Citizenship and volunteerism
8	Day 8: Happiness and mental health
9	Day 9: Trust, privacy, and inequality
10	Day 10: Conclusion

Reading List

To prepare for each session, please read the required readings (one is an academic article, while another is written for general audiences). It is important that you read these before the session to better understand the lecture material and actively contribute to discussions in class. Recommended readings are optional, and can be read if you wish to learn more about a particular topic.

1	Introduction: policy innovation & how states manage societies Required readings Hasmath, R., Teets, J.C. and Lewis, O.A. (2019). The innovative personality? Policymaking and experimentation in an authoritarian bureaucracy. Public Administration and Development. Teets, J. (2018, 27 November). The demise of local policy innovation in China. East Asia Forum. [available online] Recommended reading Creemers, R. (2017). Cyber China: Upgrading propaganda, public opinion work and social management for the twenty-first century. Journal of Contemporary China, 26(103), 85-100.
2	Small state, big society: the Chinese state under decentralisation Required readings Hillman, B. (2010). Factions and spoils: Examining political behaviour within the local state in China. The China Journal, 64, 1-18. Dollar, D. (2018, 1 November). The highs and lows of Chinese decentralisation. East Asia Forum. [available online] Recommended readings Hildebrandt, T. (2011). The political economy of social organization registration in China. China Quarterly. 208: 970-98 Stern, R. E., & O’Brien, K. J. (2012). Politics at the boundary: Mixed signals and the Chinese state. Modern China, 38(2), 174-198.
3	NGOs & GONGOs: social organisation growth & hybridization Required readings Teets, J. and Almen, O., (2018). Advocacy under Xi: NPO strategies to influence policy change. In Nonprofit Policy Forum (Vol. 9, No. 1). Freedman, J. (2016, 10 July). China’s charitable turn? How Beijing is redefining the NGO sector. Foreign Affairs. Recommended readings Hasmath, R., T. Hildebrandt, J.Y. Hsu (2019). Conceptualizing government-organized non-governmental organizations. Journal of Civil Society. Forthcoming Hildebrandt, T. (2015). From NGO to enterprise: The political economy of activist adaptation in China. In R. Hasmath & J. Hsu (Eds.), NGO governance and management in China. New York: Routledge.
4	De-familisation & re-familisation: the changing use of the family in social policy Required readings Teo, Y. (2013). Support for deserving families: Inventing the anti-welfare familialist state in Singapore. Social Politics, 20(3), 387-406. Hildebrandt, T. (2015, 9 November). End of China's one-child policy will ease pressure on gays and lesbians to bear children. South China Morning Post. [available online] Recommended readings Hildebrandt, T. (2019). The One-Child Policy, Elder Care, and LGB Chinese: A Social Policy Explanation for Family Pressure. Journal of Homosexuality, 66(5), 590-608 Teo, Y. (2010). Shaping the Singaporean family, producing the state and society. Economy and Society, 39(3)
5	Markets & the private sector: from rival to partner Required readings Zhao, M. (2012). CSR-based political legitimacy strategy: Managing the state by doing good in China and Russia. Journal of Business Ethics, 111(4), 439-460 Cara, E. (2019, 16 January). Report: Coca-Cola is quietly influencing China’s obesity policy – and shifting blame from itself. [available online] Recommended reading Noesselt, N. (2014). Microblogs and the adaptation of the Chinese party-state’s governance strategy. Governance, 27(3), 449-468.
6	The roots of (& an early verdict on) the Social Credit scheme Required readings Barkenbus, J. N. (2010). Eco-driving: An overlooked climate change initiative. Energy Policy, 38(2), 762-769 Handley, E., & Xiao, B. (2019, 23 January). China tests opening up social credit scores to social media platform WeChat with debt map. ABC News (Australia). [available online] Recommended reading Chen, Y., & Cheung, A. S. Y. (2017). The transparent self under big data profiling: Privacy and Chinese legislation on the Social Credit System. The Journal of Comparative Law, 12(2), 356-378.
7	Volunteerism, philanthropy & citizenship Required readings Yu, H. (2017). Philanthropy on the move: Mobile communication and neoliberal citizenship in China. Communication and the Public, 2(1), 35-49 Chen, Y., & Woo, R. (2019, 12 April). To spur rural development, China to send millions of students on ‘volunteering’ trips. Reuters. [available online] Recommended reading Spires, A. (2018). Chinese youth and alternative narratives of volunteering. China Information.
8	Happiness & mental health Required readings Graham, C., Zhou, S., & Zhang, J. (2017). Happiness and health in China: The paradox of progress. World Development, 96, 231-244. Baum, E. (2018). Collective psychiatry. [available online] Recommended reading Layard, R. (2006). Happiness and public policy: A challenge to the profession. The Economic Journal, 116(510), C24-C33.
9	Trust, privacy, & inequality Required readings Lepri, B. et al. (2017). The tyranny of data? the bright and dark sides of data-driven decision-making for social good. In Transparent data mining for big and small data (pp. 3-24). Sacks, S., & Laskai, L. (2019, 7 Feburary). China’s privacy conundrum. Slate [available online] Recommended readings Armstrong, S. (2016). What happens to data gathered by health and wellness apps?. BMJ: British Medical Journal (Online), 353 Reeves, J. (2012). If you see something, say something: Lateral surveillance and the uses of responsibility. Surveillance & Society, 10(3/4), 235-248.
10	Conclusion & revision for exam No readings for this session

Grading and evaluation

Regular reading quizzes (in total 5): 35%

Class participation: 15%

Final exam: 50%

Final examination format and date

The final examination will take place on Saturday, 13 July. Students will be given a choice of eight questions, from which they must answer two. They will have two hours to complete both questions, and so it is recommended they spend one hour on each question. The exam is ‘open-book’, in that students may use the notes they have taken and refer back to readings. But they are not allowed to use any AI-assistive technologies.