Susan H. Whiting, professor of political science at the University of Washington in Seattle, specializes in Chinese and comparative politics. She will speak on her new monograph, “Illiberal Law and Development: Property Rights and Conflict over Land in China” (Cambridge University Press 2026). The book looks at how economic development has occurred despite insecure property rights and weak rule of law, and how the Chinese state has maintained political control amid unrest.
About the Speaker
Susan H. Whiting (Ph.D., Michigan; B.A., Yale) is 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 first book, Power and Wealth in Rural China: The Political Economy of Institutional Change, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2001. She has published articles and chapters on authoritarianism, “rule of law,” property rights, fiscal reform, and rural development in volumes and journals such as Comparative Political Studies and China Quarterly. She has contributed to studies of governance, fiscal reform, and non-governmental organizations under the auspices of the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, and the Ford Foundation, respectively. Her current research interests include property rights in land, the role of law in authoritarian regimes, as well as the politics of fiscal reform. She teaches courses on comparative politics, Chinese politics, property rights, and authoritarian regimes.
Originally published at asia.nd.edu.