UC Berkeley Professors

I find the professors at http://ieas.berkeley.edu/ccs/faculty.html.

Law
•Robert Berring
•Stanley Lubman

Economics
•Barry Eichengreen
•Yingyi Qian

Political Science
•Lowell Dittmer
•Barry Eichengreen
•Hong Yung Lee
•Peter Lorentzen
•Kevin O'Brien
•Robert A. Scalapino (emeritus)
•Steve Weber

Sociology
•Thomas B. Gold

Robert C. Berring, Jr.
Email Address: rberring@law.berkeley.edu
Berring teaches contracts, advanced legal research and courses covering Chinese law.
His recent publications include Finding the Law (with Beth Edinger, 11th ed., 1999) and Legal Research Survival Manual, (with Edinger, 2002). He also created the award-winning video series Legal Research for the 21st Century.


Lowell Dittmer
Groups: Comparative Politics, East Asia

Professor Dittmer received his Ph.D. from The University of Chicago in 1971. His scholarly expertise is the study of contemporary China. He teaches courses on contemporary China, Northeast Asia, and the Pacific Rim. His current research interests include a study of the impact of reform on Chinese Communist authority, a survey of patterns of informal politics in East Asia, and a project on the China-Taiwan-US triangle in the context of East Asian regional politics. Professor Dittmer's recently published books and monographs include Sino-Soviet Normalization and Its International Implications (University of Washington Press, 1992), China's Quest for National Identity (with Samuel Kim, Cornell University Press, 1993), China Under Modernization (Westview Press, 1994), and South Asia's Nuclear Crisis (M. E. Sharpe, 2005).Specialization
East Asia, China

Contact Information
Office: 738 Barrows Hall
E-Mail: dittmer@berkeley.edu
Phone: 510 642-4674
Office Hours: Mondays 9:00 - 11:00 in 738 Barrows

Barry Eichengreen [Maybe should find some of his papers]
George C. Pardee and Helen N. Pardee Professor of Economics, Department of Economics
Professor, Department of Political Science
Ph.D., Yale University
E-mail: eichengr@econ.berkeley.edu
Research Interests:
Economic history, international economics

Hong Yung Lee
Groups: Comparative Politics, East Asia
Professor Hong Yung Lee received his B.A. from Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea and his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. His research areas of interest include the domestic politics of China and Korea, and political economy and international relations in East Asia. He authored Politics of Chinese Cultural Revolution (UC Berkeley, 1978) and From Revolutionary Cadres Party Technocrats in Socialist China (UC Berkeley, 1991), and edited Prospects for Change in North Korea (Institute of East Asian Studies, 1994); Korean Options in a Changing International Order (Institute of East Asian Studies, 1993); Political Authority and Economic Exchange in Korea (Oruem Publishers, 1993). He teaches courses on East Asian politics and political economy, and on international relations, and is currently working on a book length manuscript on "Comparative Study of Institutional Templates of China, Japan, and Korea."
Specialization
State and Economy, East Asia, China, Korea

Peter Lorentzen
Assistant Professor
Groups: Comparative Politics, Methodology & Formal Theory, East Asia, Models & Politics
Peter Lorentzen studies political economy and economic growth in developing countries, with a focus on China, and specializing in the application of game-theoretic models. He lived and worked in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan for over five years as (in different periods) a Fulbright scholar, a freelance journalist, and a management consultant. Professor Lorentzen joined the department in July 2007.
Specialization: Authoritarianism, Political Economy, Development, Mathematical Modeling, Game Theory, China

Education
B.A., Asian Studies, Dartmouth College, M.A., Economics, Stanford University, M.A., Political Science, Stanford University, Ph.D., Economics, Stanford Graduate School of Business

Kevin O'Brien
Alann P. Bedford Professor of Asian Studies & Professor of Political Science
Groups: Comparative Politics, East Asia
Kevin O'Brien received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1987. Professor O'Brien's research focuses on Chinese politics in the reform era. His most recent work centers on theories of popular contention, particularly the origins, dynamics and outcomes of "rightful resistance" in rural China. He is the author of Reform Without Liberalization: China's National People's Congress and the Politics of Institutional Change (Cambridge, 1990, paperback, 2008) and the co-author of Rightful Resistance in Rural China (Cambridge, 2006). His articles range across a number of topics, including legislative politics, local elections, fieldwork strategies, popular protest, policy implementation, and village-level political reform. One of his articles, "Popular Contention and Its Impact in Rural China," Comparative Political Studies (April 2005), was a co-winner of the Sage Award for Best Paper in Comparative Politics delivered at the 2004 American Political Science Association Meeting. He is the co-editor of Engaging the Law in China: State, Society and Possibilities for Justice (Stanford, 2005, paperback 2010) and the editor of Popular Protest in China (Harvard, 2008). In October 2010, his new co-edited volume, Grassroots Elections in China, was published by Routledge.Specialization
China, Social Movements, Comparative Legislatures, Local Elections, Political Reform

Education
B.A., Grinnell College, Ph.D., Yale University

Books
Popular Protest in China
"This terrific book is more than simply (as modestly characterized in the introduction) a 'nudge" in the mainstreaming of China scholarship. It is a platform for a collection of veteran China hands, non-China specialists, and a cross section of younger but nonetheless accomplished China scholars to share their insights on how China fits in the larger tradition of comparative and border-crossing contentious politics." - Andrew Mertha, Perspectives on Politics

"A valuable addition to the study of social movements and Chinese politics, Popular Protest in China provides a lively account of various forms of social resistance in a non-democratic environment. The wide range of assembled research encompasses a rich empirical spectrum of collective action from workers' strikes to internet contention, from environmental campaigns to religious dissent, and from openly organized or spontaneous assemblies to underground mobilizations. We find in the book many of the same stories on contemporary Chinese insurgence covered recently by the media but with much more complexity, nuance and depth." -Xiaodan Zhang, Contemporary Sociology

"This book defines its aim as to "nudge the study of contentious politics and China a step closer together." This is a welcome goal in the study of Chinese popular protests, and the book delivers what it promises. At the same time, it provides a wealth of information on contemporary contentious politics in China. Most articles in the book manage to be both theoretically interesting and to provide new information. . . . Everyone interested in contemporary Chinese protests and social movements will find the book worth reading. It also calls for further research using concepts from studies in contentious politics. The book thus raises the level of theoretical debate by asking how well these concepts travel to China and what China can give back to them."- Lauri Paltemaa, China Journal

"Two decades of citizen action in China have presented social movement scholars with a goldmine. A veteran scholar of Chinese protest, Kevin O'Brien, brings out this edited volume to showcase a group of experienced field researchers, continuing an effort to build a dialogue between Chinese experiences and Western theoretical models. The book is a welcome addition to the literature, as movement theorists have for years lamented the lack of lessons learned through a broadened comparative scope." -Yang Su, China Quarterly

"As Kevin O'Brien and Rachel Stern explain in their introductory chapter, the volume is designed as a springboard for new research. In that respect, they succeed marvelously. This book is highly recommended for graduate courses on contemporary Chinese politics and to anyone interested in state-society relations in China." -James Reilly, Journal of Chinese Political Science

"This fine collection of chronicles of what were largely short-lived episodes of disturbance and appeal, paired with analyses of what kept them so, sheds much light on the situation of protest in China today. The individual pieces, most of them drawing attention to novel aspects of expressing dissent in contemporary China, and new means of doing so, are all gems. Almost every one of them improves on work the authors published earlier on the same topics they write on here. But these new essays possess much more relevance to the au courant comparative social movements, "political process" approach--one that account for protest by reference to structural and ideational factors, as well as to the resources available to protesters. The extent of the theoretical and comparative material consulted and assimilated in pretty much every chapter is extremely impressive." —Dorothy Solinger, China Perspectives

"Overall, the book has several strengths that make it a valuable contribution to the literature on popular contention as well as to the study of China more generally. It includes informative cases that reflect some of the contemporary challenges facing the Chinese state. Furthermore, the individual chapters offer detailed reviews of the literature and build on one another quite well, so that the book reads as a unified body of work rather than a disjointed collection of essays, as sometimes occurs with edited volumes. Together, the essays offer a nuanced assessment of the factors contributing to the successes and failures of different protests, and have a nice combination of both historical and contemporary protests to discern important areas of convergence and divergence. . . . The book is highly recommended for a wide audience, and it is a must-read for anyone who is interested in what the future holds for the state of protest in China." —Carrie Liu Currier, Journal of Asian Studies


Rightful Resistance in Rural China

"To the study of resistance, this superb book, is akin to the discovery of a major ‘new species.’ ‘Rightful resistance’ may well be the most significant form of popular protest in quasi-authoritarian systems. This closely-reasoned, broadly comparative and innovative book will inspire many new research programs in its wake."
- James C. Scott, Yale University

"This slim volume is a little gem. After spending more than a decade researching rural protest in post-reform China, O'Brien and Li have masterfully synthesized their collaborative work in this elegantly written book. While providing substantive new material from recent surveys and interviews, as well as from research by various Chinese scholars, this book is first of all a theoretical contribution to the literature on social protest. As such, it should attract the attention of scholars both within and beyond the China field. . . In conclusion, the book defines rightful resistance with utmost clarity and rigour. The size of the volume is deceptive: this is a theoretical book, never overburdened with empirical evidence. But nonetheless there is evidence, succinctly recalled where necessary. The same holds for the innovative theoretical advances. Thoroughly familiar with the literature on popular protest, the authors succinctly mention relevant works, wasting no space on secondary digressions. This closely reasoned, clearly argued book is eminently suitable for teaching adoption in the fields of Chinese studies and political science."
- Lucien Bianco, China Quarterly

"The book is a pleasure to read. Practically every step of the argument is solidly support by empirical data – either the authors' own interviews or material from a huge bulk of Chinese and Western scholarly literature on rural China – and practically every observation is interpreted in light of the general social science literature on popular movements, protest, resistance etc. and then used to question, expand, and revise general concepts and perceptions. In this sense, the book shows how the study of China can contribute social science theory, rather than just testing whether general concepts fit or do not fit the Chinese case. It is lucidly written, and will certainly be a landmark for future debates about Chinese rural politics.”
- Stig Thogersen, Copenhagen Journal of Asian Studies

"By carefully explicating the concept of 'rightful resistance,' O'Brien and Li's book makes a significant contribution to the literature on contentious politics and the study of popular protest in China. Highly conversant with the theoretical literature and expertly synthesizing and marshaling hundreds of interviews, survey data and existing scholarly research, the end product is original, thorough and convincing. The book is also a clearly written and highly engaging read, not an insignificant achievement for such a dense conceptual study. . . . As befits such an accomplished conceptual study, the book provokes many further research questions and hypotheses and is essential reading for anyone interested in social protest in China and elsewhere."
- Jonathan Sullivan, Political Studies Review

"In six short but dense chapters, Rightful Resistance in Rural China gives the concept its fullest development and provides a sweeping picture of rural contention in contemporary China. Yet above all, this book marks the authors' systematic and innovative effort to converse with scholars of collective action, and as such, may perhaps best be seen as their gift to sociology. Readers of this journal will delight in it." -Guobin Yang, Mobilization

"This brief but dense book...is remarkable in many respects....[Rightful Resistance in Rural China] marks a major contribution towards understanding the dynamics at work in the relationship between state and society in China: it highlights the deep contradictions within the regime and the way in which these are exploited by the people....This book can be highly recommended as a major contribution to political science that sheds new light on the relations between state and society in China and raises key questions regarding the evolution and mode of functioning of the regime." -Chloé Froissart, China Perspectives

"Studies of contemporary China move between two poles of presentation -- richly detailed analyses of phenomena that seem specific to China and more sweeping panoramas that leap to broad generalities without always marking their steps forward clearly. Kevin J. O'Brien and Lianjiang Li offer an insightful study of collective action in contemporary China that successfully steers a course between the typical extremes. Their work is solidly anchored in years of research in the Chinese countryside, where they have conducted interviews and administered surveys, and about which they have read government documents and the press. Their work also takes into account the growing amount of scholarship being produced by the Chinese themselves. And most helpful to their efforts of explaining Chinese cases to a broader audience, their analysis consistently engages the literature on collective action conceptualized principally out of studies of advanced industrial societies and the histories of those societies." - R. Bin Wong, Perspectives on Politics

"O'Brien and Li's work is path-breaking in many ways. Rightful Resistance in Rural China is very inspiring to read and will initiate many new research projects in years to come. The book is a must-read for any student interested in contemporary China or popular protest and contentious politics, and it is also recommended for scholars working on political participation and political change." - Maria Heimer, China Information


"Within existing limits, villagers through rightful resistance are asserting their rights and opening up channels of political participation that are slowly changing China’s political scene at the grassroots. O’Brien and Li’s path-breaking study reveals an aspect of Chinese political change that few have been aware of and few have foreseen.” -Merle Goldman,The Review of Politics


“The themes covered in this book are encompassing, and they make meaningful theoretical contributions to how political opportunity structure influences movement emergence and process, why the repertoires of collective action evolve and expand, and what changes peasants’ local politics give rise to. The book also provides lucid and rich empirical evidence about the episodes the authors collected in their fieldwork.” -Doowon Suh, Contemporary Sociology


"This book is a major contribution to the growing literature on political development in China. It is focused and clearly written, and readers can easily follow where the engaging empirical examples fit into the literature and theoretical framework. I highly recommend it to scholars and students (graduates and undergraduates) who are interested in social movement theory and political protest in China, and its findings should appeal to many others both within and beyond the China field." - John James Kennedy, Journal of Asian Studies


Engaging the Law in China

"Engaging the Law in China is conspicuously eclectic, appealing to diverse audiences. Authors from various fields (political science, sociology, and law) use diverse methodologies (participant-observation, in-depth interviews, and archival studies) to pursue their topics. The extensive use of anecdotal materials and the minimal use of jargon make the book highly readable, even for the general public. It is particularly informative for students and scholars interested in the complex interaction between law and society, and how such interaction unfolds in a society distinct from Western legal institutions.”
- Song Yang, Law and Society Review

“In recent years ‘edited volumes’ have been out of favor with many academic as well as commercial publishers. I have never understood the bias against them. Often the product of stimulating conferences, if thoughtfully organized and edited their diversity of approach to a central theme can bring gratifying illumination. Surely this is the case with Engaging the Law in China. Those who want to know whether contemporary China has a legal system and how it functions might well start with this slender volume. This is no dry dissection of the huge number of laws promulgated by the People’s Republic of China during the past quarter century.”
- Jerome Cohen, Far Eastern Economic Review

"Engaging the Law in China heralds a rich set of findings in a promising field of study. It not only serves as an important benchmark for future research on the law in contemporary China but also for studies of Chinese state-society relations, past and present. This volume will make an important addition to any course considering these issues."— Kimberly Manning, The China Quarterly


"Engaging the Law in China successfully spans the gap between different approaches to Chinese legal studies, and I hope we will see more along this line in the future. This book is highly recommended"— Borge Bakken, The China Journal

". . . this book is a valuable contribution to research on contemporary China. It can and should be read by individuals with a specific interest in Chinese legal studies, as well as those with a general interest in state-society relations in the Chinese context." — Jeanne Wilson, Perspectives on Politics


"This book is an intrepid and worthy entry into the literature examining China's rapidly developing legal institutions, and especially laudable as a precedent for future investigations into the topic." — Michael Stein, Cambridge Law Journal



"This remarkable, perspective-setting study of the evolutions in Chinese law and its place in a changing society [is] highly beneficial. One can only strongly encourage this type of research, whose multidisciplinary ambitions allow us to grasp, if not in its entirety, at least certain important aspects of a process that tends to make the law the best ally of an emerging social justice."— Leila Choukroune, China Perspectives

"This important book offers glimpses of this tension [between state instrumentalism and social idealism] and will be an invaluable addition to the growing literature on Chinese law." —Pitman Potter, Pacific Affairs

Reform Without Liberalization

"...a most thorough and comprehensive examination of mainland China's National People's Congress. As such, his work fills a void in the study of Chinese politics, and I suspect that it will stand as the definitive study of China's NPC for many years to come. Moreover, this book's appeal will not be limited only to those who study China. It should prove useful both to students of comparative politics and to those who study legislative behavior. In sum, O'Brien has completed a significant work which is worthy of considerable attention." - Dennis Hickey, Social Science Quarterly

"Reform without Liberalization is a fine book that offers more information on an important institution than has ever before been available. It is based on solid research, makes sound judgments on important questions and advances our understanding of Chinese politics." - Barrett McCormick, Journal of Asian Studies

"This volume constitutes a valuable, thoroughly researched, and pioneering study of the NPC....provides the most carefully documented, thorough, and reliable study currently available to scholars and significantly enhances our understanding of the NPC's role in the Chinese polity since its establishment in 1954." - William Badour, Pacific Affairs

"...fills an important gap in the field of Chinese political science...[T]he importance of the book is unquestioned. It contains a wealth of information and an excellent overview of the structure and the functioning of the NPC." - Georg Hintzen, China Information

"In fact, this is the best account on the subject by far. It should be recommended to all who are interested in contemporary Chinese politics." - Young-tsu Wong, The Historian

"O'Brien has written a fine work on a subject that is sure to receive much more attention in the future." - The Journal of Politics

"...a perceptive and suggestive book....If democracy is ever to come to China, people can look back to this book as the first to tell what changes had to come to produce a real legislature."
- Lucian Pye, China Quarterly


Articles

Popular Protest

■Journal of Democracy (2009) -- "Rural Protest"
■Popular Protest in China (2008) -- "Studying Contention in Contemporary China"
■China Quarterly (2008) -- "Protest Leadership in Rural China"
■Mobilization (2007) -- "Attraction without Networks: Recruiting Strangers to Unregistered Protestantism in China"
■Comparative Political Studies (2005) -- "Popular Contention and its Impact in Rural China"
■China Journal (2004) -- "Suing the Local State: Administrative Litigation in Rural China"
■Mobilization (2003) -- "Neither Transgressive nor Contained: Boundary-Spanning Contention in Rural China"
■China Journal (2002) -- "Collective Action in the Chinese Countryside"
■China Quarterly (2002) -- "China's Contentious Pensioners"
■Modern China (1996) -- "Villagers and Popular Resistance in Contemporary China"
■World Politics (1996) -- "Rightful Resistance"
■China Quarterly (1995) -- "The Politics of Lodging Complaints in Rural China"

Village Elections
■Journal of Contemporary China (2009) -- "Path to Democracy? Assessing Village Elections in China"
■Modern China (2001) -- "Villagers, Elections, and Citizenship in Contemporary China"
■China Quarterly (2000) -- "Accommodating 'Democracy' in a One-Party State: Introducing Village Elections in China"
■Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs (1994) -- "Implementing Political Reform in China's Villages"

Miscellaneous
■Modern China (2010) -- "How Authoritarian Rule Works"
■Doing Fieldwork in China (2006) -- "Discovery, Research (Re)Design, and Theory Building"
■Engaging the Law in China (2005) -- "Law and Society in the People's Republic of China"
■Comparative Politics (1999) -- "Selective Policy Implementation in Rural China"
■Asian Survey (1999) -- "Campaign Nostalgia in the Chinese Countryside"
■China Quarterly (1992) -- "Bargaining Success of Chinese Factories"

Legislatures
■China Journal (2009) -- "Local People's Congresses and Governing China"
■China Journal (1999) -- "Hunting for Political Change"
■Legislative Studies Quarterly (1998) -- "Institutionalizing Chinese Legislatures: Tradeoffs between Autonomy and Capacity"
■China Quarterly (1994) -- "Agents and Remonstrators: Role Accumulation by Chinese People's Congress Deputies"
■Comparative Political Studies (1994) -- "Chinese People's Congresses and Legislative Embeddedness"
■China Information (1993-94) -- "Chinese Political Reform and the Question of 'Deputy Quality'"
■Asian Survey (1990) -- "Is China's National People's Congress a Conservative Legislature?"
■Studies in Comparative Communism (1989) -- "Legislative Development and Political Change"
■Legislative Studies Quarterly (1988) -- "China's National People's Congress: Reform and Its Limits"

Teaching
■Political Science 140e: Extreme Encounters with Power: How Individuals Experience Politics (Spring 2009)
■Political Science 210: Peasant Politics (Spring 2010)
■Political Science 143d: Democracy and China
■Political Science 143C - Chinese Politics (Spring 2010)
■Political Science 191-2 - Protest and Reform in Contemporary China (Spring 2008)
■Political Science 244C - Chinese Politics: New Voices and Issues for the 21st Century (Fall 2008)
■Political Science 244C - State-Society Relations in China: Approaches and Debates (Fall 2006, old version for students preparing for the East Asian qualifying exam)
■Political Science 244D - Contentious Politics in Contemporary China (Fall 2009)