Informal Politics in East Asia

This book, first published in 2000, is a pioneering effort to develop theoretical principles about informal political structures in East Asia.

Lowell Dittmer (Edited by), Haruhiro Fukui (Edited by), Peter N. S. Lee (Edited by)

9780521642323, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 19 June 2000

344 pages
23 x 15.3 x 3 cm, 0.65 kg

'… a ground breaking volume which highlights a key issue in considering governance within East Asia.' NZJAS

The authors of Informal Politics in East Asia, first published in 2000, argue that political interaction within the informal dimension (behind-the-scenes politics) is at least as common and influential, though not always as transparent or coherent, as formal politics, and that this understudied category of social interaction merits more serious and methodical attention from social scientists. This book is a pioneering effort to delineate the various forms of informal politics within different East Asian political cultures and to develop some common theoretical principles for understanding how they work. Featured here are contributions by political scientists specializing in the regions of China, Taiwan, Japan, the Korean peninsula, and Vietnam. The authors apply to this dynamic region the classic core questions of politics: who gets what, when, how, and at whose expense?

Introduction: on the significance of informal politics Haruhiro Fukui
Part I. Informal Politics under Dictatorship: 1. Informal politics among the CCP elite Lowell Dittmer
2. North Korean informal politics Samuel S. Kim
3. Informal politics of leadership succession in post-Mao China Peter N. S. Lee
4. Clientage in the PRC's National Defense R&D Sector Benjamin Ostrov
5. Formal structures, informal politics and political change in China Joseph Fewsmith
6. Informal politics in Vietnam Douglas Pike
7. Organizational involution and sociopolitical reform in China Xiaobo Lu and Lowell Dittmer
8. Psychocultural foundations of informal groups Chung-fang Yang
Part II. Informal Politics under Democracy: 9. Informal politics of Japanese diet elections Haruhiro Fukui and Shigeko N. Fukai
10. The election process and informal politics in South Korea xx Soohyon Chon
11. Informal politics in Taiwan Tun-jen Cheng and Tein-cheng Chou
12. Conclusion: East Asian informal politics in comparative perspective Lowell Dittmer.

Subject Areas: Politics & government [JP]