Xuefei Ren, Governing the Urban in China and India: Land Grabs, Slum Clearance, and the War on Air Pollution

Excerpt

Xuefei Ren’s Governing the Urban in China and India is a fascinating account of urban governance in China and India. It joins a growing set of literature comparing China and India in the area of governance, public goods provision, and economic development (Frazier, 2019; Duara and Perry, 2018; Ho, 2019; Hsueh, forthcoming; Ye, 2014). Similar to the approaches of these recent works, Ren moves away from regime-type and state capacity explanations for governance outcomes in the two countries. She argues that urban governance in China follows a territorial logic centered on territorial institutions and authorities, while in India, urban governance follows an associational logic comprising alliance building among state, private sector, and civil society actors. Ren concluded that despite the differences in approach, their outcomes are similar. Both approaches are contested, and produced new forms of inequality and exclusion in the two countries. …