330 The China Quarterly widely read works,Lloyd Eastman's The Abortive Revolution and Hung- mao Tien's Government and Politics in Kuomintang China,both dating from the early 1970s,stress the multiple weaknesses of the KMT Party and the government that it set up in 1927-28.Both these books single out phenomena that were widely seen to be prevalent in the 1930s and 1940s: endemic factionalism within the Kuomintang,the lack of an effective examination system or pro-actively functioning bureaucracy,the absence of the means or will to penetrate into the countryside and re-order rural relations,as well as the loss of revolutionary fervour and the increasing militarization of the regime.The conventional analysis of Republican government,as set out by Eastman and Tien,suggests at least implicitly that the seeds of Republican demise were planted long before the events of 1949.In this view,the Republic gave way to the People's Republic because it was institutionally weak,with its weaknesses variously illus- trated by what it failed to accomplish in the 1930s and 1940s,contempor- ary critical opinion in the 1930s and 1940s,and of course,the harsh reality of ultimate defeat and exile in 1949. However,in working backwards from 1949,this conventional view ignores much that is common sense in any kind of comparative perspec- tive.After all,most political systems exhibit fairly large gaps between what politicians say ought to be accomplished and what in fact is accomplished;serious criticism of either individuals or policy in the government is an inevitable feature of any regime with a less than totally controlled press;and all political systems produce informal groups (and the line that differentiates between tightly organized faction and informal groupings is,at best,ill-demarcated).When one turns to the governments of developing countries,many have a strong military component,are invaded with personalistic networks of various sorts,are institutionally weak,and have no particular correlation between civil service examina- tions and political stability.Further,the vast majority,even those who at some point in their political consolidation call themselves revolutionary, have neither the capacity nor the interest in radically restructuring rural relations. Intellectual and political trends in the 1980s,dramatically culminating in the end of the Cold War with the collapse of the Leninist regimes of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union,have prompted a substantial requestioning of basic assumptions about China's 20th-century revol- ution.Scholars have increasingly gained access to archival materials that have made it possible to conduct intensive research on Republican China, and this research has revealed substantial continuities in the pre-and 4.An analysis of the widespread phenomenon of penetration of the state by society in developing countries can be found in Joel Migdal,(Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1988).An impressive example of a state with many parallels to Republican China is Ataturk's Turkey in the 1920s and 1930s:like Chiang Kai-shek,Atatuirk proclaimed himself the head of an anti-imperialist movement of national liberation,and like the KMT in the 1930s,the Republican People's Party attempted to build a strong central state from the top down in urban areas,with little capacity and still less interest in radically restructuring the life of the Anatolian peasantry.330 The China Quarterly widely read works, Lloyd Eastman's The Abortive Revolution and Hung￾mao Tien's Government and Politics in Kuomintang China, both dating from the early 1970s, stress the multiple weaknesses of the KMT Party and the government that it set up in 1927-28. Both these books single out phenomena that were widely seen to be prevalent in the 1930s and 1940s: endemic factionalism within the Kuomintang, the lack of an effective examination system or pro-actively functioning bureaucracy, the absence of the means or will to penetrate into the countryside and re-order rural relations, as well as the loss of revolutionary fervour and the increasing militarization of the regime. The conventional analysis of Republican government, as set out by Eastman and Tien, suggests at least implicitly that the seeds of Republican demise were planted long before the events of 1949. In this view, the Republic gave way to the People's Republic because it was institutionally weak, with its weaknesses variously illus￾trated by what it failed to accomplish in the 1930s and 1940s, contempor￾ary critical opinion in the 1930s and 1940s, and of course, the harsh reality of ultimate defeat and exile in 1949. However, in working backwards from 1949, this conventional view ignores much that is common sense in any kind of comparative perspec￾tive. After all, most political systems exhibit fairly large gaps between what politicians say ought to be accomplished and what in fact is accomplished; serious criticism of either individuals or policy in the government is an inevitable feature of any regime with a less than totally controlled press; and all political systems produce informal groups (and the line that differentiates between tightly organized faction and informal groupings is, at best, ill-demarcated). When one turns to the governments of developing countries, many have a strong military component, are invaded with personalistic networks of various sorts, are institutionally weak, and have no particular correlation between civil service examina￾tions and political stability. Further, the vast majority, even those who at some point in their political consolidation call themselves revolutionary, have neither the capacity nor the interest in radically restructuring rural relations.4 Intellectual and political trends in the 1980s, dramatically culminating in the end of the Cold War with the collapse of the Leninist regimes of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, have prompted a substantial requestioning of basic assumptions about China's 20th-century revol￾ution. Scholars have increasingly gained access to archival materials that have made it possible to conduct intensive research on Republican China, and this research has revealed substantial continuities in the pre- and 4. An analysis of the widespread phenomenon of penetration of the state by society in developing countries can be found in Joel Migdal, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988). An impressive example of a state with many parallels to Republican China is Atatiirk's Turkey in the 1920s and 1930s: like Chiang Kai-shek, Atatirk proclaimed himself the head of an anti-imperialist movement of national liberation, and like the KMT in the 1930s, the Republican People's Party attempted to build a strong central state from the top down in urban areas, with little capacity and still less interest in radically restructuring the life of the Anatolian peasantry. widely read works, Lloyd Eastman's The Abortive Revolution and Hung￾mao Tien's Government and Politics in Kuomintang China, both dating from the early 1970s, stress the multiple weaknesses of the KMT Party and the government that it set up in 1927-28. Both these books single out phenomena that were widely seen to be prevalent in the 1930s and 1940s: endemic factionalism within the Kuomintang, the lack of an effective examination system or pro-actively functioning bureaucracy, the absence of the means or will to penetrate into the countryside and re-order rural relations, as well as the loss of revolutionary fervour and the increasing militarization of the regime. The conventional analysis of Republican government, as set out by Eastman and Tien, suggests at least implicitly that the seeds of Republican demise were planted long before the events of 1949. In this view, the Republic gave way to the People's Republic because it was institutionally weak, with its weaknesses variously illus￾trated by what it failed to accomplish in the 1930s and 1940s, contempor￾ary critical opinion in the 1930s and 1940s, and of course, the harsh reality of ultimate defeat and exile in 1949. However, in working backwards from 1949, this conventional view ignores much that is common sense in any kind of comparative perspec￾tive. After all, most political systems exhibit fairly large gaps between what politicians say ought to be accomplished and what in fact is accomplished; serious criticism of either individuals or policy in the government is an inevitable feature of any regime with a less than totally controlled press; and all political systems produce informal groups (and the line that differentiates between tightly organized faction and informal groupings is, at best, ill-demarcated). When one turns to the governments of developing countries, many have a strong military component, are invaded with personalistic networks of various sorts, are institutionally weak, and have no particular correlation between civil service examina￾tions and political stability. Further, the vast majority, even those who at some point in their political consolidation call themselves revolutionary, have neither the capacity nor the interest in radically restructuring rural relations.4 Intellectual and political trends in the 1980s, dramatically culminating in the end of the Cold War with the collapse of the Leninist regimes of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, have prompted a substantial requestioning of basic assumptions about China's 20th-century revol￾ution. Scholars have increasingly gained access to archival materials that have made it possible to conduct intensive research on Republican China, and this research has revealed substantial continuities in the pre- and 4. An analysis of the widespread phenomenon of penetration of the state by society in developing countries can be found in Joel Migdal, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988). An impressive example of a state with many parallels to Republican China is Atatiirk's Turkey in the 1920s and 1930s: like Chiang Kai-shek, Atatirk proclaimed himself the head of an anti-imperialist movement of national liberation, and like the KMT in the 1930s, the Republican People's Party attempted to build a strong central state from the top down in urban areas, with little capacity and still less interest in radically restructuring the life of the Anatolian peasantry. widely read works, Lloyd Eastman's The Abortive Revolution and Hung￾mao Tien's Government and Politics in Kuomintang China, both dating from the early 1970s, stress the multiple weaknesses of the KMT Party and the government that it set up in 1927-28. Both these books single out phenomena that were widely seen to be prevalent in the 1930s and 1940s: endemic factionalism within the Kuomintang, the lack of an effective examination system or pro-actively functioning bureaucracy, the absence of the means or will to penetrate into the countryside and re-order rural relations, as well as the loss of revolutionary fervour and the increasing militarization of the regime. The conventional analysis of Republican government, as set out by Eastman and Tien, suggests at least implicitly that the seeds of Republican demise were planted long before the events of 1949. In this view, the Republic gave way to the People's Republic because it was institutionally weak, with its weaknesses variously illus￾trated by what it failed to accomplish in the 1930s and 1940s, contempor￾ary critical opinion in the 1930s and 1940s, and of course, the harsh reality of ultimate defeat and exile in 1949. However, in working backwards from 1949, this conventional view ignores much that is common sense in any kind of comparative perspec￾tive. After all, most political systems exhibit fairly large gaps between what politicians say ought to be accomplished and what in fact is accomplished; serious criticism of either individuals or policy in the government is an inevitable feature of any regime with a less than totally controlled press; and all political systems produce informal groups (and the line that differentiates between tightly organized faction and informal groupings is, at best, ill-demarcated). When one turns to the governments of developing countries, many have a strong military component, are invaded with personalistic networks of various sorts, are institutionally weak, and have no particular correlation between civil service examina￾tions and political stability. Further, the vast majority, even those who at some point in their political consolidation call themselves revolutionary, have neither the capacity nor the interest in radically restructuring rural relations.4 Intellectual and political trends in the 1980s, dramatically culminating in the end of the Cold War with the collapse of the Leninist regimes of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, have prompted a substantial requestioning of basic assumptions about China's 20th-century revol￾ution. Scholars have increasingly gained access to archival materials that have made it possible to conduct intensive research on Republican China, and this research has revealed substantial continuities in the pre- and 4. An analysis of the widespread phenomenon of penetration of the state by society in developing countries can be found in Joel Migdal, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988). An impressive example of a state with many parallels to Republican China is Atatiirk's Turkey in the 1920s and 1930s: like Chiang Kai-shek, Atatirk proclaimed himself the head of an anti-imperialist movement of national liberation, and like the KMT in the 1930s, the Republican People's Party attempted to build a strong central state from the top down in urban areas, with little capacity and still less interest in radically restructuring the life of the Anatolian peasantry. widely read works, Lloyd Eastman's The Abortive Revolution and Hung￾mao Tien's Government and Politics in Kuomintang China, both dating from the early 1970s, stress the multiple weaknesses of the KMT Party and the government that it set up in 1927-28. Both these books single out phenomena that were widely seen to be prevalent in the 1930s and 1940s: endemic factionalism within the Kuomintang, the lack of an effective examination system or pro-actively functioning bureaucracy, the absence of the means or will to penetrate into the countryside and re-order rural relations, as well as the loss of revolutionary fervour and the increasing militarization of the regime. The conventional analysis of Republican government, as set out by Eastman and Tien, suggests at least implicitly that the seeds of Republican demise were planted long before the events of 1949. In this view, the Republic gave way to the People's Republic because it was institutionally weak, with its weaknesses variously illus￾trated by what it failed to accomplish in the 1930s and 1940s, contempor￾ary critical opinion in the 1930s and 1940s, and of course, the harsh reality of ultimate defeat and exile in 1949. However, in working backwards from 1949, this conventional view ignores much that is common sense in any kind of comparative perspec￾tive. After all, most political systems exhibit fairly large gaps between what politicians say ought to be accomplished and what in fact is accomplished; serious criticism of either individuals or policy in the government is an inevitable feature of any regime with a less than totally controlled press; and all political systems produce informal groups (and the line that differentiates between tightly organized faction and informal groupings is, at best, ill-demarcated). When one turns to the governments of developing countries, many have a strong military component, are invaded with personalistic networks of various sorts, are institutionally weak, and have no particular correlation between civil service examina￾tions and political stability. Further, the vast majority, even those who at some point in their political consolidation call themselves revolutionary, have neither the capacity nor the interest in radically restructuring rural relations.4 Intellectual and political trends in the 1980s, dramatically culminating in the end of the Cold War with the collapse of the Leninist regimes of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, have prompted a substantial requestioning of basic assumptions about China's 20th-century revol￾ution. Scholars have increasingly gained access to archival materials that have made it possible to conduct intensive research on Republican China, and this research has revealed substantial continuities in the pre- and 4. An analysis of the widespread phenomenon of penetration of the state by society in developing countries can be found in Joel Migdal, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988). An impressive example of a state with many parallels to Republican China is Atatiirk's Turkey in the 1920s and 1930s: like Chiang Kai-shek, Atatirk proclaimed himself the head of an anti-imperialist movement of national liberation, and like the KMT in the 1930s, the Republican People's Party attempted to build a strong central state from the top down in urban areas, with little capacity and still less interest in radically restructuring the life of the Anatolian peasantry. widely read works, Lloyd Eastman's The Abortive Revolution and Hung￾mao Tien's Government and Politics in Kuomintang China, both dating from the early 1970s, stress the multiple weaknesses of the KMT Party and the government that it set up in 1927-28. Both these books single out phenomena that were widely seen to be prevalent in the 1930s and 1940s: endemic factionalism within the Kuomintang, the lack of an effective examination system or pro-actively functioning bureaucracy, the absence of the means or will to penetrate into the countryside and re-order rural relations, as well as the loss of revolutionary fervour and the increasing militarization of the regime. The conventional analysis of Republican government, as set out by Eastman and Tien, suggests at least implicitly that the seeds of Republican demise were planted long before the events of 1949. In this view, the Republic gave way to the People's Republic because it was institutionally weak, with its weaknesses variously illus￾trated by what it failed to accomplish in the 1930s and 1940s, contempor￾ary critical opinion in the 1930s and 1940s, and of course, the harsh reality of ultimate defeat and exile in 1949. However, in working backwards from 1949, this conventional view ignores much that is common sense in any kind of comparative perspec￾tive. After all, most political systems exhibit fairly large gaps between what politicians say ought to be accomplished and what in fact is accomplished; serious criticism of either individuals or policy in the government is an inevitable feature of any regime with a less than totally controlled press; and all political systems produce informal groups (and the line that differentiates between tightly organized faction and informal groupings is, at best, ill-demarcated). When one turns to the governments of developing countries, many have a strong military component, are invaded with personalistic networks of various sorts, are institutionally weak, and have no particular correlation between civil service examina￾tions and political stability. Further, the vast majority, even those who at some point in their political consolidation call themselves revolutionary, have neither the capacity nor the interest in radically restructuring rural relations.4 Intellectual and political trends in the 1980s, dramatically culminating in the end of the Cold War with the collapse of the Leninist regimes of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, have prompted a substantial requestioning of basic assumptions about China's 20th-century revol￾ution. Scholars have increasingly gained access to archival materials that have made it possible to conduct intensive research on Republican China, and this research has revealed substantial continuities in the pre- and 4. An analysis of the widespread phenomenon of penetration of the state by society in developing countries can be found in Joel Migdal, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988). An impressive example of a state with many parallels to Republican China is Atatiirk's Turkey in the 1920s and 1930s: like Chiang Kai-shek, Atatirk proclaimed himself the head of an anti-imperialist movement of national liberation, and like the KMT in the 1930s, the Republican People's Party attempted to build a strong central state from the top down in urban areas, with little capacity and still less interest in radically restructuring the life of the Anatolian peasantry. widely read works, Lloyd Eastman's The Abortive Revolution and Hung￾mao Tien's Government and Politics in Kuomintang China, both dating from the early 1970s, stress the multiple weaknesses of the KMT Party and the government that it set up in 1927-28. Both these books single out phenomena that were widely seen to be prevalent in the 1930s and 1940s: endemic factionalism within the Kuomintang, the lack of an effective examination system or pro-actively functioning bureaucracy, the absence of the means or will to penetrate into the countryside and re-order rural relations, as well as the loss of revolutionary fervour and the increasing militarization of the regime. The conventional analysis of Republican government, as set out by Eastman and Tien, suggests at least implicitly that the seeds of Republican demise were planted long before the events of 1949. In this view, the Republic gave way to the People's Republic because it was institutionally weak, with its weaknesses variously illus￾trated by what it failed to accomplish in the 1930s and 1940s, contempor￾ary critical opinion in the 1930s and 1940s, and of course, the harsh reality of ultimate defeat and exile in 1949. However, in working backwards from 1949, this conventional view ignores much that is common sense in any kind of comparative perspec￾tive. After all, most political systems exhibit fairly large gaps between what politicians say ought to be accomplished and what in fact is accomplished; serious criticism of either individuals or policy in the government is an inevitable feature of any regime with a less than totally controlled press; and all political systems produce informal groups (and the line that differentiates between tightly organized faction and informal groupings is, at best, ill-demarcated). When one turns to the governments of developing countries, many have a strong military component, are invaded with personalistic networks of various sorts, are institutionally weak, and have no particular correlation between civil service examina￾tions and political stability. Further, the vast majority, even those who at some point in their political consolidation call themselves revolutionary, have neither the capacity nor the interest in radically restructuring rural relations.4 Intellectual and political trends in the 1980s, dramatically culminating in the end of the Cold War with the collapse of the Leninist regimes of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, have prompted a substantial requestioning of basic assumptions about China's 20th-century revol￾ution. Scholars have increasingly gained access to archival materials that have made it possible to conduct intensive research on Republican China, and this research has revealed substantial continuities in the pre- and 4. An analysis of the widespread phenomenon of penetration of the state by society in developing countries can be found in Joel Migdal, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988). An impressive example of a state with many parallels to Republican China is Atatiirk's Turkey in the 1920s and 1930s: like Chiang Kai-shek, Atatirk proclaimed himself the head of an anti-imperialist movement of national liberation, and like the KMT in the 1930s, the Republican People's Party attempted to build a strong central state from the top down in urban areas, with little capacity and still less interest in radically restructuring the life of the Anatolian peasantry. widely read works, Lloyd Eastman's The Abortive Revolution and Hung￾mao Tien's Government and Politics in Kuomintang China, both dating from the early 1970s, stress the multiple weaknesses of the KMT Party and the government that it set up in 1927-28. Both these books single out phenomena that were widely seen to be prevalent in the 1930s and 1940s: endemic factionalism within the Kuomintang, the lack of an effective examination system or pro-actively functioning bureaucracy, the absence of the means or will to penetrate into the countryside and re-order rural relations, as well as the loss of revolutionary fervour and the increasing militarization of the regime. The conventional analysis of Republican government, as set out by Eastman and Tien, suggests at least implicitly that the seeds of Republican demise were planted long before the events of 1949. In this view, the Republic gave way to the People's Republic because it was institutionally weak, with its weaknesses variously illus￾trated by what it failed to accomplish in the 1930s and 1940s, contempor￾ary critical opinion in the 1930s and 1940s, and of course, the harsh reality of ultimate defeat and exile in 1949. However, in working backwards from 1949, this conventional view ignores much that is common sense in any kind of comparative perspec￾tive. After all, most political systems exhibit fairly large gaps between what politicians say ought to be accomplished and what in fact is accomplished; serious criticism of either individuals or policy in the government is an inevitable feature of any regime with a less than totally controlled press; and all political systems produce informal groups (and the line that differentiates between tightly organized faction and informal groupings is, at best, ill-demarcated). When one turns to the governments of developing countries, many have a strong military component, are invaded with personalistic networks of various sorts, are institutionally weak, and have no particular correlation between civil service examina￾tions and political stability. Further, the vast majority, even those who at some point in their political consolidation call themselves revolutionary, have neither the capacity nor the interest in radically restructuring rural relations.4 Intellectual and political trends in the 1980s, dramatically culminating in the end of the Cold War with the collapse of the Leninist regimes of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, have prompted a substantial requestioning of basic assumptions about China's 20th-century revol￾ution. Scholars have increasingly gained access to archival materials that have made it possible to conduct intensive research on Republican China, and this research has revealed substantial continuities in the pre- and 4. An analysis of the widespread phenomenon of penetration of the state by society in developing countries can be found in Joel Migdal, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988). An impressive example of a state with many parallels to Republican China is Atatiirk's Turkey in the 1920s and 1930s: like Chiang Kai-shek, Atatirk proclaimed himself the head of an anti-imperialist movement of national liberation, and like the KMT in the 1930s, the Republican People's Party attempted to build a strong central state from the top down in urban areas, with little capacity and still less interest in radically restructuring the life of the Anatolian peasantry. widely read works, Lloyd Eastman's The Abortive Revolution and Hung￾mao Tien's Government and Politics in Kuomintang China, both dating from the early 1970s, stress the multiple weaknesses of the KMT Party and the government that it set up in 1927-28. Both these books single out phenomena that were widely seen to be prevalent in the 1930s and 1940s: endemic factionalism within the Kuomintang, the lack of an effective examination system or pro-actively functioning bureaucracy, the absence of the means or will to penetrate into the countryside and re-order rural relations, as well as the loss of revolutionary fervour and the increasing militarization of the regime. The conventional analysis of Republican government, as set out by Eastman and Tien, suggests at least implicitly that the seeds of Republican demise were planted long before the events of 1949. In this view, the Republic gave way to the People's Republic because it was institutionally weak, with its weaknesses variously illus￾trated by what it failed to accomplish in the 1930s and 1940s, contempor￾ary critical opinion in the 1930s and 1940s, and of course, the harsh reality of ultimate defeat and exile in 1949. However, in working backwards from 1949, this conventional view ignores much that is common sense in any kind of comparative perspec￾tive. After all, most political systems exhibit fairly large gaps between what politicians say ought to be accomplished and what in fact is accomplished; serious criticism of either individuals or policy in the government is an inevitable feature of any regime with a less than totally controlled press; and all political systems produce informal groups (and the line that differentiates between tightly organized faction and informal groupings is, at best, ill-demarcated). When one turns to the governments of developing countries, many have a strong military component, are invaded with personalistic networks of various sorts, are institutionally weak, and have no particular correlation between civil service examina￾tions and political stability. Further, the vast majority, even those who at some point in their political consolidation call themselves revolutionary, have neither the capacity nor the interest in radically restructuring rural relations.4 Intellectual and political trends in the 1980s, dramatically culminating in the end of the Cold War with the collapse of the Leninist regimes of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, have prompted a substantial requestioning of basic assumptions about China's 20th-century revol￾ution. Scholars have increasingly gained access to archival materials that have made it possible to conduct intensive research on Republican China, and this research has revealed substantial continuities in the pre- and 4. An analysis of the widespread phenomenon of penetration of the state by society in developing countries can be found in Joel Migdal, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988). An impressive example of a state with many parallels to Republican China is Atatiirk's Turkey in the 1920s and 1930s: like Chiang Kai-shek, Atatirk proclaimed himself the head of an anti-imperialist movement of national liberation, and like the KMT in the 1930s, the Republican People's Party attempted to build a strong central state from the top down in urban areas, with little capacity and still less interest in radically restructuring the life of the Anatolian peasantry. widely read works, Lloyd Eastman's The Abortive Revolution and Hung￾mao Tien's Government and Politics in Kuomintang China, both dating from the early 1970s, stress the multiple weaknesses of the KMT Party and the government that it set up in 1927-28. Both these books single out phenomena that were widely seen to be prevalent in the 1930s and 1940s: endemic factionalism within the Kuomintang, the lack of an effective examination system or pro-actively functioning bureaucracy, the absence of the means or will to penetrate into the countryside and re-order rural relations, as well as the loss of revolutionary fervour and the increasing militarization of the regime. The conventional analysis of Republican government, as set out by Eastman and Tien, suggests at least implicitly that the seeds of Republican demise were planted long before the events of 1949. In this view, the Republic gave way to the People's Republic because it was institutionally weak, with its weaknesses variously illus￾trated by what it failed to accomplish in the 1930s and 1940s, contempor￾ary critical opinion in the 1930s and 1940s, and of course, the harsh reality of ultimate defeat and exile in 1949. However, in working backwards from 1949, this conventional view ignores much that is common sense in any kind of comparative perspec￾tive. After all, most political systems exhibit fairly large gaps between what politicians say ought to be accomplished and what in fact is accomplished; serious criticism of either individuals or policy in the government is an inevitable feature of any regime with a less than totally controlled press; and all political systems produce informal groups (and the line that differentiates between tightly organized faction and informal groupings is, at best, ill-demarcated). When one turns to the governments of developing countries, many have a strong military component, are invaded with personalistic networks of various sorts, are institutionally weak, and have no particular correlation between civil service examina￾tions and political stability. Further, the vast majority, even those who at some point in their political consolidation call themselves revolutionary, have neither the capacity nor the interest in radically restructuring rural relations.4 Intellectual and political trends in the 1980s, dramatically culminating in the end of the Cold War with the collapse of the Leninist regimes of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, have prompted a substantial requestioning of basic assumptions about China's 20th-century revol￾ution. Scholars have increasingly gained access to archival materials that have made it possible to conduct intensive research on Republican China, and this research has revealed substantial continuities in the pre- and 4. An analysis of the widespread phenomenon of penetration of the state by society in developing countries can be found in Joel Migdal, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988). An impressive example of a state with many parallels to Republican China is Atatiirk's Turkey in the 1920s and 1930s: like Chiang Kai-shek, Atatirk proclaimed himself the head of an anti-imperialist movement of national liberation, and like the KMT in the 1930s, the Republican People's Party attempted to build a strong central state from the top down in urban areas, with little capacity and still less interest in radically restructuring the life of the Anatolian peasantry. widely read works, Lloyd Eastman's The Abortive Revolution and Hung￾mao Tien's Government and Politics in Kuomintang China, both dating from the early 1970s, stress the multiple weaknesses of the KMT Party and the government that it set up in 1927-28. Both these books single out phenomena that were widely seen to be prevalent in the 1930s and 1940s: endemic factionalism within the Kuomintang, the lack of an effective examination system or pro-actively functioning bureaucracy, the absence of the means or will to penetrate into the countryside and re-order rural relations, as well as the loss of revolutionary fervour and the increasing militarization of the regime. The conventional analysis of Republican government, as set out by Eastman and Tien, suggests at least implicitly that the seeds of Republican demise were planted long before the events of 1949. In this view, the Republic gave way to the People's Republic because it was institutionally weak, with its weaknesses variously illus￾trated by what it failed to accomplish in the 1930s and 1940s, contempor￾ary critical opinion in the 1930s and 1940s, and of course, the harsh reality of ultimate defeat and exile in 1949. However, in working backwards from 1949, this conventional view ignores much that is common sense in any kind of comparative perspec￾tive. After all, most political systems exhibit fairly large gaps between what politicians say ought to be accomplished and what in fact is accomplished; serious criticism of either individuals or policy in the government is an inevitable feature of any regime with a less than totally controlled press; and all political systems produce informal groups (and the line that differentiates between tightly organized faction and informal groupings is, at best, ill-demarcated). When one turns to the governments of developing countries, many have a strong military component, are invaded with personalistic networks of various sorts, are institutionally weak, and have no particular correlation between civil service examina￾tions and political stability. Further, the vast majority, even those who at some point in their political consolidation call themselves revolutionary, have neither the capacity nor the interest in radically restructuring rural relations.4 Intellectual and political trends in the 1980s, dramatically culminating in the end of the Cold War with the collapse of the Leninist regimes of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, have prompted a substantial requestioning of basic assumptions about China's 20th-century revol￾ution. Scholars have increasingly gained access to archival materials that have made it possible to conduct intensive research on Republican China, and this research has revealed substantial continuities in the pre- and 4. An analysis of the widespread phenomenon of penetration of the state by society in developing countries can be found in Joel Migdal, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988). An impressive example of a state with many parallels to Republican China is Atatiirk's Turkey in the 1920s and 1930s: like Chiang Kai-shek, Atatirk proclaimed himself the head of an anti-imperialist movement of national liberation, and like the KMT in the 1930s, the Republican People's Party attempted to build a strong central state from the top down in urban areas, with little capacity and still less interest in radically restructuring the life of the Anatolian peasantry. widely read works, Lloyd Eastman's The Abortive Revolution and Hung￾mao Tien's Government and Politics in Kuomintang China, both dating from the early 1970s, stress the multiple weaknesses of the KMT Party and the government that it set up in 1927-28. Both these books single out phenomena that were widely seen to be prevalent in the 1930s and 1940s: endemic factionalism within the Kuomintang, the lack of an effective examination system or pro-actively functioning bureaucracy, the absence of the means or will to penetrate into the countryside and re-order rural relations, as well as the loss of revolutionary fervour and the increasing militarization of the regime. The conventional analysis of Republican government, as set out by Eastman and Tien, suggests at least implicitly that the seeds of Republican demise were planted long before the events of 1949. In this view, the Republic gave way to the People's Republic because it was institutionally weak, with its weaknesses variously illus￾trated by what it failed to accomplish in the 1930s and 1940s, contempor￾ary critical opinion in the 1930s and 1940s, and of course, the harsh reality of ultimate defeat and exile in 1949. However, in working backwards from 1949, this conventional view ignores much that is common sense in any kind of comparative perspec￾tive. After all, most political systems exhibit fairly large gaps between what politicians say ought to be accomplished and what in fact is accomplished; serious criticism of either individuals or policy in the government is an inevitable feature of any regime with a less than totally controlled press; and all political systems produce informal groups (and the line that differentiates between tightly organized faction and informal groupings is, at best, ill-demarcated). When one turns to the governments of developing countries, many have a strong military component, are invaded with personalistic networks of various sorts, are institutionally weak, and have no particular correlation between civil service examina￾tions and political stability. Further, the vast majority, even those who at some point in their political consolidation call themselves revolutionary, have neither the capacity nor the interest in radically restructuring rural relations.4 Intellectual and political trends in the 1980s, dramatically culminating in the end of the Cold War with the collapse of the Leninist regimes of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, have prompted a substantial requestioning of basic assumptions about China's 20th-century revol￾ution. Scholars have increasingly gained access to archival materials that have made it possible to conduct intensive research on Republican China, and this research has revealed substantial continuities in the pre- and 4. An analysis of the widespread phenomenon of penetration of the state by society in developing countries can be found in Joel Migdal, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988). An impressive example of a state with many parallels to Republican China is Atatiirk's Turkey in the 1920s and 1930s: like Chiang Kai-shek, Atatirk proclaimed himself the head of an anti-imperialist movement of national liberation, and like the KMT in the 1930s, the Republican People's Party attempted to build a strong central state from the top down in urban areas, with little capacity and still less interest in radically restructuring the life of the Anatolian peasantry. widely read works, Lloyd Eastman's The Abortive Revolution and Hung￾mao Tien's Government and Politics in Kuomintang China, both dating from the early 1970s, stress the multiple weaknesses of the KMT Party and the government that it set up in 1927-28. Both these books single out phenomena that were widely seen to be prevalent in the 1930s and 1940s: endemic factionalism within the Kuomintang, the lack of an effective examination system or pro-actively functioning bureaucracy, the absence of the means or will to penetrate into the countryside and re-order rural relations, as well as the loss of revolutionary fervour and the increasing militarization of the regime. The conventional analysis of Republican government, as set out by Eastman and Tien, suggests at least implicitly that the seeds of Republican demise were planted long before the events of 1949. In this view, the Republic gave way to the People's Republic because it was institutionally weak, with its weaknesses variously illus￾trated by what it failed to accomplish in the 1930s and 1940s, contempor￾ary critical opinion in the 1930s and 1940s, and of course, the harsh reality of ultimate defeat and exile in 1949. However, in working backwards from 1949, this conventional view ignores much that is common sense in any kind of comparative perspec￾tive. After all, most political systems exhibit fairly large gaps between what politicians say ought to be accomplished and what in fact is accomplished; serious criticism of either individuals or policy in the government is an inevitable feature of any regime with a less than totally controlled press; and all political systems produce informal groups (and the line that differentiates between tightly organized faction and informal groupings is, at best, ill-demarcated). When one turns to the governments of developing countries, many have a strong military component, are invaded with personalistic networks of various sorts, are institutionally weak, and have no particular correlation between civil service examina￾tions and political stability. Further, the vast majority, even those who at some point in their political consolidation call themselves revolutionary, have neither the capacity nor the interest in radically restructuring rural relations.4 Intellectual and political trends in the 1980s, dramatically culminating in the end of the Cold War with the collapse of the Leninist regimes of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, have prompted a substantial requestioning of basic assumptions about China's 20th-century revol￾ution. Scholars have increasingly gained access to archival materials that have made it possible to conduct intensive research on Republican China, and this research has revealed substantial continuities in the pre- and 4. An analysis of the widespread phenomenon of penetration of the state by society in developing countries can be found in Joel Migdal, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988). An impressive example of a state with many parallels to Republican China is Atatiirk's Turkey in the 1920s and 1930s: like Chiang Kai-shek, Atatirk proclaimed himself the head of an anti-imperialist movement of national liberation, and like the KMT in the 1930s, the Republican People's Party attempted to build a strong central state from the top down in urban areas, with little capacity and still less interest in radically restructuring the life of the Anatolian peasantry. widely read works, Lloyd Eastman's The Abortive Revolution and Hung￾mao Tien's Government and Politics in Kuomintang China, both dating from the early 1970s, stress the multiple weaknesses of the KMT Party and the government that it set up in 1927-28. Both these books single out phenomena that were widely seen to be prevalent in the 1930s and 1940s: endemic factionalism within the Kuomintang, the lack of an effective examination system or pro-actively functioning bureaucracy, the absence of the means or will to penetrate into the countryside and re-order rural relations, as well as the loss of revolutionary fervour and the increasing militarization of the regime. The conventional analysis of Republican government, as set out by Eastman and Tien, suggests at least implicitly that the seeds of Republican demise were planted long before the events of 1949. In this view, the Republic gave way to the People's Republic because it was institutionally weak, with its weaknesses variously illus￾trated by what it failed to accomplish in the 1930s and 1940s, contempor￾ary critical opinion in the 1930s and 1940s, and of course, the harsh reality of ultimate defeat and exile in 1949. However, in working backwards from 1949, this conventional view ignores much that is common sense in any kind of comparative perspec￾tive. After all, most political systems exhibit fairly large gaps between what politicians say ought to be accomplished and what in fact is accomplished; serious criticism of either individuals or policy in the government is an inevitable feature of any regime with a less than totally controlled press; and all political systems produce informal groups (and the line that differentiates between tightly organized faction and informal groupings is, at best, ill-demarcated). When one turns to the governments of developing countries, many have a strong military component, are invaded with personalistic networks of various sorts, are institutionally weak, and have no particular correlation between civil service examina￾tions and political stability. Further, the vast majority, even those who at some point in their political consolidation call themselves revolutionary, have neither the capacity nor the interest in radically restructuring rural relations.4 Intellectual and political trends in the 1980s, dramatically culminating in the end of the Cold War with the collapse of the Leninist regimes of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, have prompted a substantial requestioning of basic assumptions about China's 20th-century revol￾ution. Scholars have increasingly gained access to archival materials that have made it possible to conduct intensive research on Republican China, and this research has revealed substantial continuities in the pre- and 4. An analysis of the widespread phenomenon of penetration of the state by society in developing countries can be found in Joel Migdal, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988). An impressive example of a state with many parallels to Republican China is Atatiirk's Turkey in the 1920s and 1930s: like Chiang Kai-shek, Atatirk proclaimed himself the head of an anti-imperialist movement of national liberation, and like the KMT in the 1930s, the Republican People's Party attempted to build a strong central state from the top down in urban areas, with little capacity and still less interest in radically restructuring the life of the Anatolian peasantry. widely read works, Lloyd Eastman's The Abortive Revolution and Hung￾mao Tien's Government and Politics in Kuomintang China, both dating from the early 1970s, stress the multiple weaknesses of the KMT Party and the government that it set up in 1927-28. Both these books single out phenomena that were widely seen to be prevalent in the 1930s and 1940s: endemic factionalism within the Kuomintang, the lack of an effective examination system or pro-actively functioning bureaucracy, the absence of the means or will to penetrate into the countryside and re-order rural relations, as well as the loss of revolutionary fervour and the increasing militarization of the regime. The conventional analysis of Republican government, as set out by Eastman and Tien, suggests at least implicitly that the seeds of Republican demise were planted long before the events of 1949. In this view, the Republic gave way to the People's Republic because it was institutionally weak, with its weaknesses variously illus￾trated by what it failed to accomplish in the 1930s and 1940s, contempor￾ary critical opinion in the 1930s and 1940s, and of course, the harsh reality of ultimate defeat and exile in 1949. However, in working backwards from 1949, this conventional view ignores much that is common sense in any kind of comparative perspec￾tive. After all, most political systems exhibit fairly large gaps between what politicians say ought to be accomplished and what in fact is accomplished; serious criticism of either individuals or policy in the government is an inevitable feature of any regime with a less than totally controlled press; and all political systems produce informal groups (and the line that differentiates between tightly organized faction and informal groupings is, at best, ill-demarcated). When one turns to the governments of developing countries, many have a strong military component, are invaded with personalistic networks of various sorts, are institutionally weak, and have no particular correlation between civil service examina￾tions and political stability. Further, the vast majority, even those who at some point in their political consolidation call themselves revolutionary, have neither the capacity nor the interest in radically restructuring rural relations.4 Intellectual and political trends in the 1980s, dramatically culminating in the end of the Cold War with the collapse of the Leninist regimes of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, have prompted a substantial requestioning of basic assumptions about China's 20th-century revol￾ution. Scholars have increasingly gained access to archival materials that have made it possible to conduct intensive research on Republican China, and this research has revealed substantial continuities in the pre- and 4. An analysis of the widespread phenomenon of penetration of the state by society in developing countries can be found in Joel Migdal, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988). An impressive example of a state with many parallels to Republican China is Atatiirk's Turkey in the 1920s and 1930s: like Chiang Kai-shek, Atatirk proclaimed himself the head of an anti-imperialist movement of national liberation, and like the KMT in the 1930s, the Republican People's Party attempted to build a strong central state from the top down in urban areas, with little capacity and still less interest in radically restructuring the life of the Anatolian peasantry. widely read works, Lloyd Eastman's The Abortive Revolution and Hung￾mao Tien's Government and Politics in Kuomintang China, both dating from the early 1970s, stress the multiple weaknesses of the KMT Party and the government that it set up in 1927-28. Both these books single out phenomena that were widely seen to be prevalent in the 1930s and 1940s: endemic factionalism within the Kuomintang, the lack of an effective examination system or pro-actively functioning bureaucracy, the absence of the means or will to penetrate into the countryside and re-order rural relations, as well as the loss of revolutionary fervour and the increasing militarization of the regime. The conventional analysis of Republican government, as set out by Eastman and Tien, suggests at least implicitly that the seeds of Republican demise were planted long before the events of 1949. In this view, the Republic gave way to the People's Republic because it was institutionally weak, with its weaknesses variously illus￾trated by what it failed to accomplish in the 1930s and 1940s, contempor￾ary critical opinion in the 1930s and 1940s, and of course, the harsh reality of ultimate defeat and exile in 1949. However, in working backwards from 1949, this conventional view ignores much that is common sense in any kind of comparative perspec￾tive. After all, most political systems exhibit fairly large gaps between what politicians say ought to be accomplished and what in fact is accomplished; serious criticism of either individuals or policy in the government is an inevitable feature of any regime with a less than totally controlled press; and all political systems produce informal groups (and the line that differentiates between tightly organized faction and informal groupings is, at best, ill-demarcated). When one turns to the governments of developing countries, many have a strong military component, are invaded with personalistic networks of various sorts, are institutionally weak, and have no particular correlation between civil service examina￾tions and political stability. Further, the vast majority, even those who at some point in their political consolidation call themselves revolutionary, have neither the capacity nor the interest in radically restructuring rural relations.4 Intellectual and political trends in the 1980s, dramatically culminating in the end of the Cold War with the collapse of the Leninist regimes of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, have prompted a substantial requestioning of basic assumptions about China's 20th-century revol￾ution. Scholars have increasingly gained access to archival materials that have made it possible to conduct intensive research on Republican China, and this research has revealed substantial continuities in the pre- and 4. An analysis of the widespread phenomenon of penetration of the state by society in developing countries can be found in Joel Migdal, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988). An impressive example of a state with many parallels to Republican China is Atatiirk's Turkey in the 1920s and 1930s: like Chiang Kai-shek, Atatirk proclaimed himself the head of an anti-imperialist movement of national liberation, and like the KMT in the 1930s, the Republican People's Party attempted to build a strong central state from the top down in urban areas, with little capacity and still less interest in radically restructuring the life of the Anatolian peasantry. widely read works, Lloyd Eastman's The Abortive Revolution and Hung￾mao Tien's Government and Politics in Kuomintang China, both dating from the early 1970s, stress the multiple weaknesses of the KMT Party and the government that it set up in 1927-28. Both these books single out phenomena that were widely seen to be prevalent in the 1930s and 1940s: endemic factionalism within the Kuomintang, the lack of an effective examination system or pro-actively functioning bureaucracy, the absence of the means or will to penetrate into the countryside and re-order rural relations, as well as the loss of revolutionary fervour and the increasing militarization of the regime. The conventional analysis of Republican government, as set out by Eastman and Tien, suggests at least implicitly that the seeds of Republican demise were planted long before the events of 1949. In this view, the Republic gave way to the People's Republic because it was institutionally weak, with its weaknesses variously illus￾trated by what it failed to accomplish in the 1930s and 1940s, contempor￾ary critical opinion in the 1930s and 1940s, and of course, the harsh reality of ultimate defeat and exile in 1949. However, in working backwards from 1949, this conventional view ignores much that is common sense in any kind of comparative perspec￾tive. After all, most political systems exhibit fairly large gaps between what politicians say ought to be accomplished and what in fact is accomplished; serious criticism of either individuals or policy in the government is an inevitable feature of any regime with a less than totally controlled press; and all political systems produce informal groups (and the line that differentiates between tightly organized faction and informal groupings is, at best, ill-demarcated). When one turns to the governments of developing countries, many have a strong military component, are invaded with personalistic networks of various sorts, are institutionally weak, and have no particular correlation between civil service examina￾tions and political stability. Further, the vast majority, even those who at some point in their political consolidation call themselves revolutionary, have neither the capacity nor the interest in radically restructuring rural relations.4 Intellectual and political trends in the 1980s, dramatically culminating in the end of the Cold War with the collapse of the Leninist regimes of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, have prompted a substantial requestioning of basic assumptions about China's 20th-century revol￾ution. Scholars have increasingly gained access to archival materials that have made it possible to conduct intensive research on Republican China, and this research has revealed substantial continuities in the pre- and 4. An analysis of the widespread phenomenon of penetration of the state by society in developing countries can be found in Joel Migdal, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988). An impressive example of a state with many parallels to Republican China is Atatiirk's Turkey in the 1920s and 1930s: like Chiang Kai-shek, Atatirk proclaimed himself the head of an anti-imperialist movement of national liberation, and like the KMT in the 1930s, the Republican People's Party attempted to build a strong central state from the top down in urban areas, with little capacity and still less interest in radically restructuring the life of the Anatolian peasantry. widely read works, Lloyd Eastman's The Abortive Revolution and Hung￾mao Tien's Government and Politics in Kuomintang China, both dating from the early 1970s, stress the multiple weaknesses of the KMT Party and the government that it set up in 1927-28. Both these books single out phenomena that were widely seen to be prevalent in the 1930s and 1940s: endemic factionalism within the Kuomintang, the lack of an effective examination system or pro-actively functioning bureaucracy, the absence of the means or will to penetrate into the countryside and re-order rural relations, as well as the loss of revolutionary fervour and the increasing militarization of the regime. The conventional analysis of Republican government, as set out by Eastman and Tien, suggests at least implicitly that the seeds of Republican demise were planted long before the events of 1949. In this view, the Republic gave way to the People's Republic because it was institutionally weak, with its weaknesses variously illus￾trated by what it failed to accomplish in the 1930s and 1940s, contempor￾ary critical opinion in the 1930s and 1940s, and of course, the harsh reality of ultimate defeat and exile in 1949. However, in working backwards from 1949, this conventional view ignores much that is common sense in any kind of comparative perspec￾tive. After all, most political systems exhibit fairly large gaps between what politicians say ought to be accomplished and what in fact is accomplished; serious criticism of either individuals or policy in the government is an inevitable feature of any regime with a less than totally controlled press; and all political systems produce informal groups (and the line that differentiates between tightly organized faction and informal groupings is, at best, ill-demarcated). When one turns to the governments of developing countries, many have a strong military component, are invaded with personalistic networks of various sorts, are institutionally weak, and have no particular correlation between civil service examina￾tions and political stability. Further, the vast majority, even those who at some point in their political consolidation call themselves revolutionary, have neither the capacity nor the interest in radically restructuring rural relations.4 Intellectual and political trends in the 1980s, dramatically culminating in the end of the Cold War with the collapse of the Leninist regimes of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, have prompted a substantial requestioning of basic assumptions about China's 20th-century revol￾ution. Scholars have increasingly gained access to archival materials that have made it possible to conduct intensive research on Republican China, and this research has revealed substantial continuities in the pre- and 4. An analysis of the widespread phenomenon of penetration of the state by society in developing countries can be found in Joel Migdal, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988). An impressive example of a state with many parallels to Republican China is Atatiirk's Turkey in the 1920s and 1930s: like Chiang Kai-shek, Atatirk proclaimed himself the head of an anti-imperialist movement of national liberation, and like the KMT in the 1930s, the Republican People's Party attempted to build a strong central state from the top down in urban areas, with little capacity and still less interest in radically restructuring the life of the Anatolian peasantry. widely read works, Lloyd Eastman's The Abortive Revolution and Hung￾mao Tien's Government and Politics in Kuomintang China, both dating from the early 1970s, stress the multiple weaknesses of the KMT Party and the government that it set up in 1927-28. Both these books single out phenomena that were widely seen to be prevalent in the 1930s and 1940s: endemic factionalism within the Kuomintang, the lack of an effective examination system or pro-actively functioning bureaucracy, the absence of the means or will to penetrate into the countryside and re-order rural relations, as well as the loss of revolutionary fervour and the increasing militarization of the regime. The conventional analysis of Republican government, as set out by Eastman and Tien, suggests at least implicitly that the seeds of Republican demise were planted long before the events of 1949. In this view, the Republic gave way to the People's Republic because it was institutionally weak, with its weaknesses variously illus￾trated by what it failed to accomplish in the 1930s and 1940s, contempor￾ary critical opinion in the 1930s and 1940s, and of course, the harsh reality of ultimate defeat and exile in 1949. However, in working backwards from 1949, this conventional view ignores much that is common sense in any kind of comparative perspec￾tive. After all, most political systems exhibit fairly large gaps between what politicians say ought to be accomplished and what in fact is accomplished; serious criticism of either individuals or policy in the government is an inevitable feature of any regime with a less than totally controlled press; and all political systems produce informal groups (and the line that differentiates between tightly organized faction and informal groupings is, at best, ill-demarcated). When one turns to the governments of developing countries, many have a strong military component, are invaded with personalistic networks of various sorts, are institutionally weak, and have no particular correlation between civil service examina￾tions and political stability. Further, the vast majority, even those who at some point in their political consolidation call themselves revolutionary, have neither the capacity nor the interest in radically restructuring rural relations.4 Intellectual and political trends in the 1980s, dramatically culminating in the end of the Cold War with the collapse of the Leninist regimes of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, have prompted a substantial requestioning of basic assumptions about China's 20th-century revol￾ution. Scholars have increasingly gained access to archival materials that have made it possible to conduct intensive research on Republican China, and this research has revealed substantial continuities in the pre- and 4. An analysis of the widespread phenomenon of penetration of the state by society in developing countries can be found in Joel Migdal, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988). An impressive example of a state with many parallels to Republican China is Atatiirk's Turkey in the 1920s and 1930s: like Chiang Kai-shek, Atatirk proclaimed himself the head of an anti-imperialist movement of national liberation, and like the KMT in the 1930s, the Republican People's Party attempted to build a strong central state from the top down in urban areas, with little capacity and still less interest in radically restructuring the life of the Anatolian peasantry. widely read works, Lloyd Eastman's The Abortive Revolution and Hung￾mao Tien's Government and Politics in Kuomintang China, both dating from the early 1970s, stress the multiple weaknesses of the KMT Party and the government that it set up in 1927-28. Both these books single out phenomena that were widely seen to be prevalent in the 1930s and 1940s: endemic factionalism within the Kuomintang, the lack of an effective examination system or pro-actively functioning bureaucracy, the absence of the means or will to penetrate into the countryside and re-order rural relations, as well as the loss of revolutionary fervour and the increasing militarization of the regime. The conventional analysis of Republican government, as set out by Eastman and Tien, suggests at least implicitly that the seeds of Republican demise were planted long before the events of 1949. In this view, the Republic gave way to the People's Republic because it was institutionally weak, with its weaknesses variously illus￾trated by what it failed to accomplish in the 1930s and 1940s, contempor￾ary critical opinion in the 1930s and 1940s, and of course, the harsh reality of ultimate defeat and exile in 1949. However, in working backwards from 1949, this conventional view ignores much that is common sense in any kind of comparative perspec￾tive. After all, most political systems exhibit fairly large gaps between what politicians say ought to be accomplished and what in fact is accomplished; serious criticism of either individuals or policy in the government is an inevitable feature of any regime with a less than totally controlled press; and all political systems produce informal groups (and the line that differentiates between tightly organized faction and informal groupings is, at best, ill-demarcated). When one turns to the governments of developing countries, many have a strong military component, are invaded with personalistic networks of various sorts, are institutionally weak, and have no particular correlation between civil service examina￾tions and political stability. Further, the vast majority, even those who at some point in their political consolidation call themselves revolutionary, have neither the capacity nor the interest in radically restructuring rural relations.4 Intellectual and political trends in the 1980s, dramatically culminating in the end of the Cold War with the collapse of the Leninist regimes of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, have prompted a substantial requestioning of basic assumptions about China's 20th-century revol￾ution. Scholars have increasingly gained access to archival materials that have made it possible to conduct intensive research on Republican China, and this research has revealed substantial continuities in the pre- and 4. An analysis of the widespread phenomenon of penetration of the state by society in developing countries can be found in Joel Migdal, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988). An impressive example of a state with many parallels to Republican China is Atatiirk's Turkey in the 1920s and 1930s: like Chiang Kai-shek, Atatirk proclaimed himself the head of an anti-imperialist movement of national liberation, and like the KMT in the 1930s, the Republican People's Party attempted to build a strong central state from the top down in urban areas, with little capacity and still less interest in radically restructuring the life of the Anatolian peasantry. widely read works, Lloyd Eastman's The Abortive Revolution and Hung￾mao Tien's Government and Politics in Kuomintang China, both dating from the early 1970s, stress the multiple weaknesses of the KMT Party and the government that it set up in 1927-28. Both these books single out phenomena that were widely seen to be prevalent in the 1930s and 1940s: endemic factionalism within the Kuomintang, the lack of an effective examination system or pro-actively functioning bureaucracy, the absence of the means or will to penetrate into the countryside and re-order rural relations, as well as the loss of revolutionary fervour and the increasing militarization of the regime. The conventional analysis of Republican government, as set out by Eastman and Tien, suggests at least implicitly that the seeds of Republican demise were planted long before the events of 1949. In this view, the Republic gave way to the People's Republic because it was institutionally weak, with its weaknesses variously illus￾trated by what it failed to accomplish in the 1930s and 1940s, contempor￾ary critical opinion in the 1930s and 1940s, and of course, the harsh reality of ultimate defeat and exile in 1949. However, in working backwards from 1949, this conventional view ignores much that is common sense in any kind of comparative perspec￾tive. After all, most political systems exhibit fairly large gaps between what politicians say ought to be accomplished and what in fact is accomplished; serious criticism of either individuals or policy in the government is an inevitable feature of any regime with a less than totally controlled press; and all political systems produce informal groups (and the line that differentiates between tightly organized faction and informal groupings is, at best, ill-demarcated). When one turns to the governments of developing countries, many have a strong military component, are invaded with personalistic networks of various sorts, are institutionally weak, and have no particular correlation between civil service examina￾tions and political stability. Further, the vast majority, even those who at some point in their political consolidation call themselves revolutionary, have neither the capacity nor the interest in radically restructuring rural relations.4 Intellectual and political trends in the 1980s, dramatically culminating in the end of the Cold War with the collapse of the Leninist regimes of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, have prompted a substantial requestioning of basic assumptions about China's 20th-century revol￾ution. Scholars have increasingly gained access to archival materials that have made it possible to conduct intensive research on Republican China, and this research has revealed substantial continuities in the pre- and 4. An analysis of the widespread phenomenon of penetration of the state by society in developing countries can be found in Joel Migdal, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988). An impressive example of a state with many parallels to Republican China is Atatiirk's Turkey in the 1920s and 1930s: like Chiang Kai-shek, Atatirk proclaimed himself the head of an anti-imperialist movement of national liberation, and like the KMT in the 1930s, the Republican People's Party attempted to build a strong central state from the top down in urban areas, with little capacity and still less interest in radically restructuring the life of the Anatolian peasantry. widely read works, Lloyd Eastman's The Abortive Revolution and Hung￾mao Tien's Government and Politics in Kuomintang China, both dating from the early 1970s, stress the multiple weaknesses of the KMT Party and the government that it set up in 1927-28. Both these books single out phenomena that were widely seen to be prevalent in the 1930s and 1940s: endemic factionalism within the Kuomintang, the lack of an effective examination system or pro-actively functioning bureaucracy, the absence of the means or will to penetrate into the countryside and re-order rural relations, as well as the loss of revolutionary fervour and the increasing militarization of the regime. The conventional analysis of Republican government, as set out by Eastman and Tien, suggests at least implicitly that the seeds of Republican demise were planted long before the events of 1949. In this view, the Republic gave way to the People's Republic because it was institutionally weak, with its weaknesses variously illus￾trated by what it failed to accomplish in the 1930s and 1940s, contempor￾ary critical opinion in the 1930s and 1940s, and of course, the harsh reality of ultimate defeat and exile in 1949. However, in working backwards from 1949, this conventional view ignores much that is common sense in any kind of comparative perspec￾tive. After all, most political systems exhibit fairly large gaps between what politicians say ought to be accomplished and what in fact is accomplished; serious criticism of either individuals or policy in the government is an inevitable feature of any regime with a less than totally controlled press; and all political systems produce informal groups (and the line that differentiates between tightly organized faction and informal groupings is, at best, ill-demarcated). When one turns to the governments of developing countries, many have a strong military component, are invaded with personalistic networks of various sorts, are institutionally weak, and have no particular correlation between civil service examina￾tions and political stability. Further, the vast majority, even those who at some point in their political consolidation call themselves revolutionary, have neither the capacity nor the interest in radically restructuring rural relations.4 Intellectual and political trends in the 1980s, dramatically culminating in the end of the Cold War with the collapse of the Leninist regimes of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, have prompted a substantial requestioning of basic assumptions about China's 20th-century revol￾ution. Scholars have increasingly gained access to archival materials that have made it possible to conduct intensive research on Republican China, and this research has revealed substantial continuities in the pre- and 4. An analysis of the widespread phenomenon of penetration of the state by society in developing countries can be found in Joel Migdal, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988). An impressive example of a state with many parallels to Republican China is Atatiirk's Turkey in the 1920s and 1930s: like Chiang Kai-shek, Atatirk proclaimed himself the head of an anti-imperialist movement of national liberation, and like the KMT in the 1930s, the Republican People's Party attempted to build a strong central state from the top down in urban areas, with little capacity and still less interest in radically restructuring the life of the Anatolian peasantry. widely read works, Lloyd Eastman's The Abortive Revolution and Hung￾mao Tien's Government and Politics in Kuomintang China, both dating from the early 1970s, stress the multiple weaknesses of the KMT Party and the government that it set up in 1927-28. Both these books single out phenomena that were widely seen to be prevalent in the 1930s and 1940s: endemic factionalism within the Kuomintang, the lack of an effective examination system or pro-actively functioning bureaucracy, the absence of the means or will to penetrate into the countryside and re-order rural relations, as well as the loss of revolutionary fervour and the increasing militarization of the regime. The conventional analysis of Republican government, as set out by Eastman and Tien, suggests at least implicitly that the seeds of Republican demise were planted long before the events of 1949. In this view, the Republic gave way to the People's Republic because it was institutionally weak, with its weaknesses variously illus￾trated by what it failed to accomplish in the 1930s and 1940s, contempor￾ary critical opinion in the 1930s and 1940s, and of course, the harsh reality of ultimate defeat and exile in 1949. However, in working backwards from 1949, this conventional view ignores much that is common sense in any kind of comparative perspec￾tive. After all, most political systems exhibit fairly large gaps between what politicians say ought to be accomplished and what in fact is accomplished; serious criticism of either individuals or policy in the government is an inevitable feature of any regime with a less than totally controlled press; and all political systems produce informal groups (and the line that differentiates between tightly organized faction and informal groupings is, at best, ill-demarcated). When one turns to the governments of developing countries, many have a strong military component, are invaded with personalistic networks of various sorts, are institutionally weak, and have no particular correlation between civil service examina￾tions and political stability. Further, the vast majority, even those who at some point in their political consolidation call themselves revolutionary, have neither the capacity nor the interest in radically restructuring rural relations.4 Intellectual and political trends in the 1980s, dramatically culminating in the end of the Cold War with the collapse of the Leninist regimes of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, have prompted a substantial requestioning of basic assumptions about China's 20th-century revol￾ution. Scholars have increasingly gained access to archival materials that have made it possible to conduct intensive research on Republican China, and this research has revealed substantial continuities in the pre- and 4. An analysis of the widespread phenomenon of penetration of the state by society in developing countries can be found in Joel Migdal, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988). An impressive example of a state with many parallels to Republican China is Atatiirk's Turkey in the 1920s and 1930s: like Chiang Kai-shek, Atatirk proclaimed himself the head of an anti-imperialist movement of national liberation, and like the KMT in the 1930s, the Republican People's Party attempted to build a strong central state from the top down in urban areas, with little capacity and still less interest in radically restructuring the life of the Anatolian peasantry. widely read works, Lloyd Eastman's The Abortive Revolution and Hung￾mao Tien's Government and Politics in Kuomintang China, both dating from the early 1970s, stress the multiple weaknesses of the KMT Party and the government that it set up in 1927-28. Both these books single out phenomena that were widely seen to be prevalent in the 1930s and 1940s: endemic factionalism within the Kuomintang, the lack of an effective examination system or pro-actively functioning bureaucracy, the absence of the means or will to penetrate into the countryside and re-order rural relations, as well as the loss of revolutionary fervour and the increasing militarization of the regime. The conventional analysis of Republican government, as set out by Eastman and Tien, suggests at least implicitly that the seeds of Republican demise were planted long before the events of 1949. In this view, the Republic gave way to the People's Republic because it was institutionally weak, with its weaknesses variously illus￾trated by what it failed to accomplish in the 1930s and 1940s, contempor￾ary critical opinion in the 1930s and 1940s, and of course, the harsh reality of ultimate defeat and exile in 1949. However, in working backwards from 1949, this conventional view ignores much that is common sense in any kind of comparative perspec￾tive. After all, most political systems exhibit fairly large gaps between what politicians say ought to be accomplished and what in fact is accomplished; serious criticism of either individuals or policy in the government is an inevitable feature of any regime with a less than totally controlled press; and all political systems produce informal groups (and the line that differentiates between tightly organized faction and informal groupings is, at best, ill-demarcated). When one turns to the governments of developing countries, many have a strong military component, are invaded with personalistic networks of various sorts, are institutionally weak, and have no particular correlation between civil service examina￾tions and political stability. Further, the vast majority, even those who at some point in their political consolidation call themselves revolutionary, have neither the capacity nor the interest in radically restructuring rural relations.4 Intellectual and political trends in the 1980s, dramatically culminating in the end of the Cold War with the collapse of the Leninist regimes of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, have prompted a substantial requestioning of basic assumptions about China's 20th-century revol￾ution. Scholars have increasingly gained access to archival materials that have made it possible to conduct intensive research on Republican China, and this research has revealed substantial continuities in the pre- and 4. An analysis of the widespread phenomenon of penetration of the state by society in developing countries can be found in Joel Migdal, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988). An impressive example of a state with many parallels to Republican China is Atatiirk's Turkey in the 1920s and 1930s: like Chiang Kai-shek, Atatirk proclaimed himself the head of an anti-imperialist movement of national liberation, and like the KMT in the 1930s, the Republican People's Party attempted to build a strong central state from the top down in urban areas, with little capacity and still less interest in radically restructuring the life of the Anatolian peasantry