Excerpt: China’s Governance Puzzle

Enabling Transparency and Participation in a Single-Party StateThis extensive collaborative study not only documents the origins and scope of these reforms across China, but offers the first systematic assessment by quantitatively and qualitatively analyzing the impact of transparency and participation on important governance outcomes. Comparing across provinces and over time, the authors argue the reforms are resulting in lower corruption and enhanced legal compliance, but these outcomes also depend on a broader societal ecosystem that includes an active media and robust civil society. The Asia Foundation supported a national research study, the Chinese Governance Assessment Project, starting in 2010, which was the basis for research that lead to China's Governance Puzzle.