Kevin J. O’Brien is Bedford Professor of Political Science at the University

of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on popular p rotest and Chinese

politics in the reform era. He is the author of Reform without Liberalization:

China’s National People’s Congress and the Politics of Institutional Change and the coeditor of Engaging the Law in China: State, Society, and Possibilities for Justice. Currently, he is serving as the chair of the Center for Chinese Studies at UCBerkeley.

Lianjiang Li is an associate professor in the Department of Government and

International Studies at Hong Kong Baptist University. His research focuses

on village elections and collective action in rural China. He has published in

Asian Survey, China Information, China Journal, China Quarterly, Comparative

Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Contemporary China, and Modern China.

How can the poor and weak “work”a political system to their advantage?

Drawing mainly on interviews and surveys in rural China, Kevin O’Brien and

Lianjiang Li show that popular action often hinges on locating and exploiting

divisions within the state. Otherwise powerless people use the rhetoric and

commitments of the central government to try to fight misconduct by local

officials, open up clogged channels of participation, and push back the frontiers of the permissible. This “rightful resistance” has far-reaching implications for our understanding of contentious politics. As O’Brien and Li explore the origins, dynamics, and consequences of rightful resistance, they highlight similarities between collective action in places as varied as China, the former East Germany, and the United States, while suggesting how Chinese experiences speak to issues such as opportunities to protest, claims radicalization, tactical innovation, and the outcomes of contention. Although the focus of their rich, ground-level analysis is contemporary China, the authors make a compelling argument that wherever a gap between rights promised and rights delivered exists, there is room for rightful resistance to emerge.