PhD defence by Zhiqi Xu

Xu argues that China’s poverty alleviation governance is best understood as a multi-level process of policy co-production under hierarchy. Agency in this setting, she argues, operates within constraint, with organizational intermediaries aligning innovation with shifting political priorities; frontline officials responding to policy narratives that define who acts, who leads and who bears responsibility; and community members interpreting collective provision through responsibility beliefs shaped by norms, village life and long-term state intervention.

These forms of agency are politically bounded and uneven, but consequential. They shape whether policy ideas become adoptable, whether initiative-taking appears legitimate or risky, and whether collective welfare services can be co-provided and sustained.

Drawing of several case studies in China, she concludes that poverty alleviation outcomes in the country emerged through a layered process in which organizational actors, frontline cadres and rural residents interpreted and enacted policy under constraint.

Doctoral Board

Chair

Dr Roy Huijsmans

Doctoral dissertation supervisors

Professor Wil Hout, ISS
Professor Natascha Wagner, Radboud University

Full Doctoral Committee

Professor N. Zhang, Zhejiang University, China
D. L. Liu, Zhejiang University, China
Dr A. van den Dool, Duke Kunshan University
Professor Matthias Rieger, Erasmus University Rotterdam
Dr M. Faling, ISS