1. Public goods provision in China and India; Part I. Social Contracts: 2. Social contracts, institutional design, and public goods provision; 3. The Chinese social contract; 4. The Indian social contract; Part II. Comparing Urban Water Management in China and India: 5. Comparing China's and India's water institutional frameworks; 6. Quenching thirst in China's first-tier cities: Shenzhen and Beijing; 7. Water constraints in India's megacities: New Delhi and Hyderabad; 8. Conclusion: types of social contracts and can social contracts change?
Provides the answer to the enduring puzzle why India lags behind China in offering public goods to its people.
Selina Ho is Assistant Professor of International Affairs at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. She researches and teaches Chinese politics and foreign policy, and the international relations of Asia. She has published peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and opinion pieces on China's relations with its neighbors in South, Southeast, and Central Asia, focusing on the politics of water and infrastructure development. Selina completed her Ph.D. at The Johns Hopkins University, The Paul H. Nitze School of International Studies (SAIS), where she also received a Masters in International Public Policy (Honors). She has been appointed a Global Futures Council Fellow (Regional Governance) with the World Economic Forum.
'An excellent study on the differential performances of China and
India in distributing public goods provisions. With the aid of case
studies of water supply in four Chinese and Indian cities, Selina
Ho captures an enduring puzzle as to why India lags behind China in
offering collective goods to its population, despite its democratic
credentials. A must read for all interested in development as well
as all politicians and bureaucrats in India!' T. V. Paul, James
McGill Professor of International Relations, McGill University,
Canada
'Selina Ho's Thirsty Cities is an original, ingenious, and
admirably researched account that sets out to explain why China's
cities provide a much higher level of drinking water than do
India's. But the book goes far beyond that. It introduces a novel
concept, the 'social contract' - an informal institution that
serves as an implicit agreement between leaders to rule in a manner
that, to establish their own legitimacy, meets citizens'
expectations. Using it, Ho skillfully contrasts China's with
India's mode of governance in recent decades and thereby explicates
a great deal about their divergent regimes. China's government,
which fosters capacity and local government autonomy, is grounded
in material-cum-moral performance, while India's (despite its
democracy) is situated in ideals of socialism and populism, which
afford far less administrative efficacy, she demonstrates. A book
with wide applicability across the globe today.' Dorothy J.
Solinger, Professor Emerita, University of California, Irvine
'This book wrestles intelligently with the puzzle of why an
authoritarian regime, China, is more proficient at providing
essential public goods than a robust democracy, India. This
counter-intuitive outcome is the subject of this important work by
Selina Ho. She highlights the crucial role of informal institutions
and normative principles in explaining service provision as
determinant rather than regime type or other factors. The work is
essential reading for anyone interested in the relationship between
the politics of welfare, regime type and public goods provision.'
Tony Saich, Daewoo Professor of International Affairs, Director,
Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Harvard
Kennedy School
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