State Capacity and Local Governance: China and India Compared

The Harvard-Yenching Institute presents a roundtable on major political problems facing the Asian giants today.

This roundtable brings together a group of distinguished scholars of China and India to consider some of the major political problems and perils facing the Asian giants today.  How do the world’s two biggest countries compare in terms of their ability to manage and mollify their often unruly citizens?  How well does each of them cope on the ground with such enormous challenges as poverty and inequality, popular protest, ethnic conflict, and environmental degradation?  How effectively do central and local governments coordinate, complement, or contradict one another in meeting these challenges?  Can China and India’s relative successes and shortcomings shed light on prospects for democratic versus non-democratic governance in the twenty-first century?