"Village and Urban Neighbourhood Elections in the PRC between Authoritarian Legitimacy-building and Bottom-up Democratization"
Joint project with the Institute of East Asian Studies (Prof. Dr. Thomas Heberer), University Duisburg-Essen, sponsored by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and the Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation, Berlin.
This project assessed the impact of direct political participation at the local level on the political awareness of China’s peasants and urban dwellers. Extensive field research and qualitative interviewing has been undertaken in six villages in Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, Jiangxi and Jilin provinces; and in six urban neighborhoods in the cities of Shenyang, Chongqing and Shenzhen throughout 2002-2004.
official duration: October 2002-September 2005