Social Protection under Authoritarianism2014

"Why would authoritarian leaders expand social welfare provision in the absence of democratization? What are the distributive features and implications of social welfare expansion in an authoritarian country? How do authoritarian leaders design and enforce social welfare expansion in a decentralized multilevel governance setting? This book identifies the trade-off authoritarian leaders face in social welfare provision: effectively balancing between elites and masses in order to maximize the regime's survival prospects. Using government documents, filed interviews, survey data, and government statistics about Chinese social health insurance, this book reveals that the Chinese authoritarian leaders attempt to manage the distributive trade-off by a "stratified expansion" strategy,...