Illiberal Law and Development

Monday, November 2, 2026

1:00-2:30 p.m. (Eastern)

Wilf Hall 3/F conference room and on zoom

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About the event

China’s rapid economic development in the absence of strong protections for property rights challenges conventional economic and legal theories. The regime’s ability to maintain not only political control but a significant level of popular support is another Chinese puzzle. Susan Whiting, a longtime scholar of rural China’s political economy, will share insights from her latest book, Illiberal Law and Development: Property Rights and Conflict Over Land in China. Whiting argues that the Chinese state uses law to reassign land rights in order to facilitate development of new sectors and that this analysis sheds new light on the development paths of other cases, including eighteenth-century England and contemporary India. All three states intervened to reassign property rights and spur economic development, but the states differ more significantly in their use of law to manage the resulting conflict.

Professor Whiting will join us live via Zoom and will answer questions from both the online audience and those in the room.

About the speaker

Susan Whiting is a professor of political science at the University of Washington in Seattle, where she also holds adjunct appointments in the Jackson School of International Studies and the School of Law. She specializes in Chinese and comparative politics, with an emphasis on the political economy of development. Her 2026 book, Illiberal Law and Development: Property Rights and Conflict Over Land in China, extends the study of law and rights beyond the territory mapped out in her acclaimed 2001 book, Power and Wealth in Rural China: The Political Economy of Institutional Change. She also has published articles and chapters on authoritarianism, rule of law, property rights, fiscal reform, and rural development. She teaches courses on comparative politics, Chinese politics, property rights, and authoritarian regimes.