6 - The Origin of Self-governed Communities in Authoritarian Cities

Summary

Based on a unique dataset of questionnaire survey about Chinese homeowners, I found that democratized neighborhoods have enjoyed better governing outcomes than have their nondemocratized counterparts, while also showing that the local government played a helping hand in establishing HoAs and thereby afforded neighborhoods mechanisms for self-governance. I also found that homeowner activists in democratized neighborhoods developed greater trust in the local government and deemed local officials both more supportive of neighborhood self-governance and less likely to collude with real estate management companies and developers than was the case within non-democratized neighborhoods.