Explaining Political Participation in Rural China: Evidence from a 2008 Survey.

Based on 2008 data from The China Survey, a nationwide social science survey of Chinese population, this paper builds upon earlier works (e.g., by Shi and by Verba, Nie, and Kim) by adapting their theoretical frameworks for application to China's rural population, testing the resulting theoretical models with data for the rural subsample. In so doing, we focus specifically upon two modes of political participation: voting and communal activities. We find that while political participation in rural China is in many ways like participation in other, very different political systems, there are still special features reflecting China's unique social, political, and institutional arrangements ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]