Lynette H. Ong, "Outsourcing Repression: Everyday State Power in Contemporary China," (Oxford University Press, 2022)

How do states coerce citizens into compliance while simultaneously minimizing backlash? In Outsourcing Repression, Lynette H. Ong examines how the Chinese state engages nonstate actors, from violent street gangsters to nonviolent grassroots brokers, to coerce and mobilize the masses for state pursuits, while reducing costs and minimizing resistance. She draws on ethnographic research conducted annually from 2011 to 2019--the years from Hu Jintao to Xi Jinping, a unique and original event dataset, and a collection of government regulations in a study of everyday land grabs and housing demolition in China. Theorizing a counterintuitive form of repression that reduces resistance and backlash, Ong invites the reader to reimagine the new ground state power credibly occupies. Everyday state power is quotidian power acquired through society by penetrating nonstate territories and mobilizing the masses within. Ong uses China's urbanization scheme as a window of observation to explain how the arguments can be generalized to other country contexts. Outsourcing Repression Lynette H. Ong Chinese state coercion strategies Nonstate actors in China Grassroots brokers and street gangs in China Land grabs and housing demolitions in China State power and social mobilization Everyday state power in China Minimizing backlash in authoritarian regimes Hu Jintao to Xi Jinping repression tactics Urbanization and social control in China Ethnographic research on state coercion Nonviolent coercion in China State penetration into nonstate territories Counterintuitive repression strategies State-society relations in China East Asian Studies Podcast Chinese Politics Political Science International Relations Podcast