
Kevin O'Brien
Kevin O’Brien is the Alann P. Bedford Professor of Asian Studies and Professor of Political Science at UC-Berkeley. He is also the Director of Berkeley's Institute of East Asian Studies and the Walter and Elise Haas Professor of Asian Studies. He received a B.A. from Grinnell College and a Ph.D from Yale University, and taught at Ohio State before moving to Berkeley in 2000. His research focuses on contemporary Chinese politics. Among his publications are Reform Without Liberalization: China's National People's Congress and the Politics of Institutional Change, Rightful Resistance in Rural China (with Lianjiang Li), Engaging the Law in China: State, Society and Possibilities for Justice (co-edited with Neil Diamant and Stanley Lubman), and Popular Protest in China, as well as articles on legislative politics, local elections, fieldwork strategies, NGOs, migrant workers, implementation, policing, rural protest and village-level political reform. His most recent work centers on the Chinese state and theories of popular contention, particularly as concerns the policing of protest and types of repression that are neither "soft" nor "hard."
Rightful Resistance in Rural China (with Lianjiang Li)
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006)
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Rural Politics in Contemporary China (ed. with Emily T. Yeh and Ye Jingzhong) (London: Routledge, 2014) Reviews |
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Popular Protest in China (ed.)
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008) Reviews
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Engaging the Law in China: State, Society and Possibilities for Justice (ed. with Neil J. Diamant and Stanley B. Lubman) (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005) Reviews
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Reform Without Liberalization: China’s National People’s Congress and the Politics of Institutional Change (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990) Reviews |
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Grassroots Elections in China (ed. with Zhao Suisheng) (London: Routledge, 2011) Reviews
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- China Review (2017) -- "Preventing Protest One Person at a Time: Psychological Coercion and Relational Repression in China"
- Asian Survey (2016) -- "China's Unhappy Police"
- China Journal (2015) -- "The Reach of the State: Work Units, Family Ties and 'Harmonious Demolition'"
- China Quarterly (2013) -- "Relational Repression in China: Using Social Ties to Demobilize Protesters"
- Modern China (2012) -- "Politics at the Boundary: Mixed Signals and the Chinese State"
- Mobilization (2020) -- "Bureaucrat-Assisted Contention in China"
- Journal of Democracy (2017) -- "China's Disaffected Insiders"
- Armed Forces and Society (2015) -- "Contentious Veterans: China's Retired Officers Speak Out"
- China Journal (2019) -- "Phantom Services: Deflecting Migrant Workers in China"
- China Quarterly (2018) -- "Enthusiastic Policy Implementation and its Aftermath: The Sudden Expansion and Contraction of China's Microfinance for Women Programme"
- Comparative Politics (1999) -- "Selective Policy Implementation in Rural China"
- Asian Survey (1999) -- "Campaign Nostalgia in the Chinese Countryside"
Syllabi
- Political Science 244D - Contentious Politics in Contemporary China (Fall 2017)
- Political Science 244C - Chinese Politics: New Voices and Issues (Fall 2021)
- Political Science 191-2 - Protest and Reform in Contemporary China (Fall 2016)
- Political Science 140e: Extreme Encounters with Power: How Individuals Experience Politics (Spring 2013)
- Political Science 143C - Chinese Politics (Fall 2011)
- Political Science 210: Peasant Politics (Spring 2013)
- Political Science 244C - State-Society Relations in China: Approaches and Debates (Fall 2006, old version for students preparing for the East Asian qualifying exam)
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Political Science 143d: Democracy and China