Local State Adhocracy: Infrastructural Power and Stability Maintenance in Grassroots China

Previous studies on state’s infrastructural power assume that the state is composed of formal bureaucratic and coercive institutions. This study explores a new format of infrastructural power, termed the “local state adhocracy,” by using China’s stability maintenance apparatuses as a case. Configured through the state’s reordering of institutional and social resources but operating in rather flexible and impromptus manners, the local state adhocracy is rooted in the CCP’s political tradition of deploying informal and expedient organizations for policy implementation in a less institutionalized context. It generates new capability of the state but also weakens the rule of law and institutionalization.