The Evolution of Republican Government 331 post-1949 periods.As in addition the People's Republic has renounced its earlier radical vision of revolution,and the post-1986 political liberaliza- tion in Taiwan proceeds,the year 1949 increasingly seems to be less of the all-encompassing prism through which all perspectives on the preced- ing Republican period are necessarily and inevitably refracted. Research on Republican-era government and administration is now beginning to shift away from explaining the outcome of the civil war in terms of the KMT regime's undeniable weaknesses,and towards evaluat- ing what Republican governments attempted to do,given the context and constraints of their own times,to overcome those weaknesses.Current work has just begun to scratch the surface,and many basic questions about Republican-era government,particularly those concerning the relations between the different levels of central,provincial and local government,remain unanswered.This article concentrates on central government in the Republican period and develops three preliminary themes:that despite changes in regime,Republican-era governments were characterized by a surprising consistency in terms of basic agenda and constraints on action;that this agenda pushed all Republican-era govern- ments to attempt to build institutional capacity rapidly;and that to this end,Republican-era governments experimented widely and intensively with models drawn from elsewhere,recombined these models with long-standing Chinese norms of statecraft and governance and produced a wide variety of new hybrids-often only partially reconcilable-in different sectors of the central government. Executive Agendas and Institutional Weaknesses Despite obvious and important changes in regime and government organization-from presidential dictatorship in the 1910s,to the Beiyang governments of the 1920s,to the ascendancy of the KMT Party and its National Government in the late 1920s and 1930s -the executives of Republican-era governments were characterized by a quite remarkable consistency in agendas and goals.They were also constrained in achiev- ing those goals by an equally consistent set of structural constraints. Government in the Republican era inherited substantially intact the late Qing xinzheng (New Government)agenda which held that China de- pended on a vigorous central state to lead the way out of international 5.This shift in emphasis began in the early to mid-1980s,with the publication of William Kirby's Germany and Republican China (Stanford:Stanford University Press,1984). Preliminary research on my forthcoming book,Strong Institutions in Weak Polities: Personnel Policies and State Building in China.1927-40(Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1998)was conducted in 1987-89.At present there is a significant cadre of graduate students from programmes in history and political science at Harvard,Berkeley,and Washington University.St.Louis who are in some stage of writing or research on Ph.D.dissertations that address such different aspects of Republican government as constitution-drafting,the KMT's efforts to combat low-level corruption,and water conservancy.Even within the People's Republic,scholars are also beginning to reconsider the Republican period in a more sympathetic light:Nanjing University Press began publication of Minguo yanjiu(Studies on Republican China)with an editorial board of members from China and abroad,in summer 1995.The Evolution of Republican Government post-1949 periods. As in addition the People's Republic has renounced its earlier radical vision of revolution, and the post-1986 political liberaliza￾tion in Taiwan proceeds, the year 1949 increasingly seems to be less of the all-encompassing prism through which all perspectives on the preced￾ing Republican period are necessarily and inevitably refracted. Research on Republican-era government and administration is now beginning to shift away from explaining the outcome of the civil war in terms of the KMT regime's undeniable weaknesses, and towards evaluat￾ing what Republican governments attempted to do, given the context and constraints of their own times, to overcome those weaknesses.5 Current work has just begun to scratch the surface, and many basic questions about Republican-era government, particularly those concerning the relations between the different levels of central, provincial and local government, remain unanswered. This article concentrates on central government in the Republican period and develops three preliminary themes: that despite changes in regime, Republican-era governments were characterized by a surprising consistency in terms of basic agenda and constraints on action; that this agenda pushed all Republican-era govern￾ments to attempt to build institutional capacity rapidly; and that to this end, Republican-era governments experimented widely and intensively with models drawn from elsewhere, recombined these models with long-standing Chinese norms of statecraft and governance and produced a wide variety of new hybrids - often only partially reconcilable - in different sectors of the central government. Executive Agendas and Institutional Weaknesses Despite obvious and important changes in regime and government organization - from presidential dictatorship in the 1910s, to the Beiyang governments of the 1920s, to the ascendancy of the KMT Party and its National Government in the late 1920s and 1930s - the executives of Republican-era governments were characterized by a quite remarkable consistency in agendas and goals. They were also constrained in achiev￾ing those goals by an equally consistent set of structural constraints. Government in the Republican era inherited substantially intact the late Qing xinzheng (New Government) agenda which held that China de￾pended on a vigorous central state to lead the way out of international 5. This shift in emphasis began in the early to mid-1980s, with the publication of William Kirby's Germany and Republican China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984). Preliminary research on my forthcoming book, Strong Institutions in Weak Polities: Personnel Policies and State Building in China, 1927-40 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) was conducted in 1987-89. At present there is a significant cadre of graduate students from programmes in history and political science at Harvard, Berkeley, and Washington University, St. Louis who are in some stage of writing or research on Ph.D. dissertations that address such different aspects of Republican government as constitution-drafting, the KMT' s efforts to combat low-level corruption, and water conservancy. Even within the People's Republic, scholars are also beginning to reconsider the Republican period in a more sympathetic light: Nanjing University Press began publication of Minguo yanjiu (Studies on Republican China) with an editorial board of members from China and abroad, in summer 1995. post-1949 periods. As in addition the People's Republic has renounced its earlier radical vision of revolution, and the post-1986 political liberaliza￾tion in Taiwan proceeds, the year 1949 increasingly seems to be less of the all-encompassing prism through which all perspectives on the preced￾ing Republican period are necessarily and inevitably refracted. Research on Republican-era government and administration is now beginning to shift away from explaining the outcome of the civil war in terms of the KMT regime's undeniable weaknesses, and towards evaluat￾ing what Republican governments attempted to do, given the context and constraints of their own times, to overcome those weaknesses.5 Current work has just begun to scratch the surface, and many basic questions about Republican-era government, particularly those concerning the relations between the different levels of central, provincial and local government, remain unanswered. This article concentrates on central government in the Republican period and develops three preliminary themes: that despite changes in regime, Republican-era governments were characterized by a surprising consistency in terms of basic agenda and constraints on action; that this agenda pushed all Republican-era govern￾ments to attempt to build institutional capacity rapidly; and that to this end, Republican-era governments experimented widely and intensively with models drawn from elsewhere, recombined these models with long-standing Chinese norms of statecraft and governance and produced a wide variety of new hybrids - often only partially reconcilable - in different sectors of the central government. Executive Agendas and Institutional Weaknesses Despite obvious and important changes in regime and government organization - from presidential dictatorship in the 1910s, to the Beiyang governments of the 1920s, to the ascendancy of the KMT Party and its National Government in the late 1920s and 1930s - the executives of Republican-era governments were characterized by a quite remarkable consistency in agendas and goals. They were also constrained in achiev￾ing those goals by an equally consistent set of structural constraints. Government in the Republican era inherited substantially intact the late Qing xinzheng (New Government) agenda which held that China de￾pended on a vigorous central state to lead the way out of international 5. This shift in emphasis began in the early to mid-1980s, with the publication of William Kirby's Germany and Republican China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984). Preliminary research on my forthcoming book, Strong Institutions in Weak Polities: Personnel Policies and State Building in China, 1927-40 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) was conducted in 1987-89. At present there is a significant cadre of graduate students from programmes in history and political science at Harvard, Berkeley, and Washington University, St. Louis who are in some stage of writing or research on Ph.D. dissertations that address such different aspects of Republican government as constitution-drafting, the KMT' s efforts to combat low-level corruption, and water conservancy. Even within the People's Republic, scholars are also beginning to reconsider the Republican period in a more sympathetic light: Nanjing University Press began publication of Minguo yanjiu (Studies on Republican China) with an editorial board of members from China and abroad, in summer 1995. post-1949 periods. As in addition the People's Republic has renounced its earlier radical vision of revolution, and the post-1986 political liberaliza￾tion in Taiwan proceeds, the year 1949 increasingly seems to be less of the all-encompassing prism through which all perspectives on the preced￾ing Republican period are necessarily and inevitably refracted. Research on Republican-era government and administration is now beginning to shift away from explaining the outcome of the civil war in terms of the KMT regime's undeniable weaknesses, and towards evaluat￾ing what Republican governments attempted to do, given the context and constraints of their own times, to overcome those weaknesses.5 Current work has just begun to scratch the surface, and many basic questions about Republican-era government, particularly those concerning the relations between the different levels of central, provincial and local government, remain unanswered. This article concentrates on central government in the Republican period and develops three preliminary themes: that despite changes in regime, Republican-era governments were characterized by a surprising consistency in terms of basic agenda and constraints on action; that this agenda pushed all Republican-era govern￾ments to attempt to build institutional capacity rapidly; and that to this end, Republican-era governments experimented widely and intensively with models drawn from elsewhere, recombined these models with long-standing Chinese norms of statecraft and governance and produced a wide variety of new hybrids - often only partially reconcilable - in different sectors of the central government. Executive Agendas and Institutional Weaknesses Despite obvious and important changes in regime and government organization - from presidential dictatorship in the 1910s, to the Beiyang governments of the 1920s, to the ascendancy of the KMT Party and its National Government in the late 1920s and 1930s - the executives of Republican-era governments were characterized by a quite remarkable consistency in agendas and goals. They were also constrained in achiev￾ing those goals by an equally consistent set of structural constraints. Government in the Republican era inherited substantially intact the late Qing xinzheng (New Government) agenda which held that China de￾pended on a vigorous central state to lead the way out of international 5. This shift in emphasis began in the early to mid-1980s, with the publication of William Kirby's Germany and Republican China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984). Preliminary research on my forthcoming book, Strong Institutions in Weak Polities: Personnel Policies and State Building in China, 1927-40 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) was conducted in 1987-89. At present there is a significant cadre of graduate students from programmes in history and political science at Harvard, Berkeley, and Washington University, St. Louis who are in some stage of writing or research on Ph.D. dissertations that address such different aspects of Republican government as constitution-drafting, the KMT' s efforts to combat low-level corruption, and water conservancy. Even within the People's Republic, scholars are also beginning to reconsider the Republican period in a more sympathetic light: Nanjing University Press began publication of Minguo yanjiu (Studies on Republican China) with an editorial board of members from China and abroad, in summer 1995. post-1949 periods. As in addition the People's Republic has renounced its earlier radical vision of revolution, and the post-1986 political liberaliza￾tion in Taiwan proceeds, the year 1949 increasingly seems to be less of the all-encompassing prism through which all perspectives on the preced￾ing Republican period are necessarily and inevitably refracted. Research on Republican-era government and administration is now beginning to shift away from explaining the outcome of the civil war in terms of the KMT regime's undeniable weaknesses, and towards evaluat￾ing what Republican governments attempted to do, given the context and constraints of their own times, to overcome those weaknesses.5 Current work has just begun to scratch the surface, and many basic questions about Republican-era government, particularly those concerning the relations between the different levels of central, provincial and local government, remain unanswered. This article concentrates on central government in the Republican period and develops three preliminary themes: that despite changes in regime, Republican-era governments were characterized by a surprising consistency in terms of basic agenda and constraints on action; that this agenda pushed all Republican-era govern￾ments to attempt to build institutional capacity rapidly; and that to this end, Republican-era governments experimented widely and intensively with models drawn from elsewhere, recombined these models with long-standing Chinese norms of statecraft and governance and produced a wide variety of new hybrids - often only partially reconcilable - in different sectors of the central government. Executive Agendas and Institutional Weaknesses Despite obvious and important changes in regime and government organization - from presidential dictatorship in the 1910s, to the Beiyang governments of the 1920s, to the ascendancy of the KMT Party and its National Government in the late 1920s and 1930s - the executives of Republican-era governments were characterized by a quite remarkable consistency in agendas and goals. They were also constrained in achiev￾ing those goals by an equally consistent set of structural constraints. Government in the Republican era inherited substantially intact the late Qing xinzheng (New Government) agenda which held that China de￾pended on a vigorous central state to lead the way out of international 5. This shift in emphasis began in the early to mid-1980s, with the publication of William Kirby's Germany and Republican China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984). Preliminary research on my forthcoming book, Strong Institutions in Weak Polities: Personnel Policies and State Building in China, 1927-40 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) was conducted in 1987-89. At present there is a significant cadre of graduate students from programmes in history and political science at Harvard, Berkeley, and Washington University, St. Louis who are in some stage of writing or research on Ph.D. dissertations that address such different aspects of Republican government as constitution-drafting, the KMT' s efforts to combat low-level corruption, and water conservancy. Even within the People's Republic, scholars are also beginning to reconsider the Republican period in a more sympathetic light: Nanjing University Press began publication of Minguo yanjiu (Studies on Republican China) with an editorial board of members from China and abroad, in summer 1995. post-1949 periods. As in addition the People's Republic has renounced its earlier radical vision of revolution, and the post-1986 political liberaliza￾tion in Taiwan proceeds, the year 1949 increasingly seems to be less of the all-encompassing prism through which all perspectives on the preced￾ing Republican period are necessarily and inevitably refracted. Research on Republican-era government and administration is now beginning to shift away from explaining the outcome of the civil war in terms of the KMT regime's undeniable weaknesses, and towards evaluat￾ing what Republican governments attempted to do, given the context and constraints of their own times, to overcome those weaknesses.5 Current work has just begun to scratch the surface, and many basic questions about Republican-era government, particularly those concerning the relations between the different levels of central, provincial and local government, remain unanswered. This article concentrates on central government in the Republican period and develops three preliminary themes: that despite changes in regime, Republican-era governments were characterized by a surprising consistency in terms of basic agenda and constraints on action; that this agenda pushed all Republican-era govern￾ments to attempt to build institutional capacity rapidly; and that to this end, Republican-era governments experimented widely and intensively with models drawn from elsewhere, recombined these models with long-standing Chinese norms of statecraft and governance and produced a wide variety of new hybrids - often only partially reconcilable - in different sectors of the central government. Executive Agendas and Institutional Weaknesses Despite obvious and important changes in regime and government organization - from presidential dictatorship in the 1910s, to the Beiyang governments of the 1920s, to the ascendancy of the KMT Party and its National Government in the late 1920s and 1930s - the executives of Republican-era governments were characterized by a quite remarkable consistency in agendas and goals. They were also constrained in achiev￾ing those goals by an equally consistent set of structural constraints. Government in the Republican era inherited substantially intact the late Qing xinzheng (New Government) agenda which held that China de￾pended on a vigorous central state to lead the way out of international 5. This shift in emphasis began in the early to mid-1980s, with the publication of William Kirby's Germany and Republican China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984). Preliminary research on my forthcoming book, Strong Institutions in Weak Polities: Personnel Policies and State Building in China, 1927-40 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) was conducted in 1987-89. At present there is a significant cadre of graduate students from programmes in history and political science at Harvard, Berkeley, and Washington University, St. Louis who are in some stage of writing or research on Ph.D. dissertations that address such different aspects of Republican government as constitution-drafting, the KMT' s efforts to combat low-level corruption, and water conservancy. Even within the People's Republic, scholars are also beginning to reconsider the Republican period in a more sympathetic light: Nanjing University Press began publication of Minguo yanjiu (Studies on Republican China) with an editorial board of members from China and abroad, in summer 1995. post-1949 periods. As in addition the People's Republic has renounced its earlier radical vision of revolution, and the post-1986 political liberaliza￾tion in Taiwan proceeds, the year 1949 increasingly seems to be less of the all-encompassing prism through which all perspectives on the preced￾ing Republican period are necessarily and inevitably refracted. Research on Republican-era government and administration is now beginning to shift away from explaining the outcome of the civil war in terms of the KMT regime's undeniable weaknesses, and towards evaluat￾ing what Republican governments attempted to do, given the context and constraints of their own times, to overcome those weaknesses.5 Current work has just begun to scratch the surface, and many basic questions about Republican-era government, particularly those concerning the relations between the different levels of central, provincial and local government, remain unanswered. This article concentrates on central government in the Republican period and develops three preliminary themes: that despite changes in regime, Republican-era governments were characterized by a surprising consistency in terms of basic agenda and constraints on action; that this agenda pushed all Republican-era govern￾ments to attempt to build institutional capacity rapidly; and that to this end, Republican-era governments experimented widely and intensively with models drawn from elsewhere, recombined these models with long-standing Chinese norms of statecraft and governance and produced a wide variety of new hybrids - often only partially reconcilable - in different sectors of the central government. Executive Agendas and Institutional Weaknesses Despite obvious and important changes in regime and government organization - from presidential dictatorship in the 1910s, to the Beiyang governments of the 1920s, to the ascendancy of the KMT Party and its National Government in the late 1920s and 1930s - the executives of Republican-era governments were characterized by a quite remarkable consistency in agendas and goals. They were also constrained in achiev￾ing those goals by an equally consistent set of structural constraints. Government in the Republican era inherited substantially intact the late Qing xinzheng (New Government) agenda which held that China de￾pended on a vigorous central state to lead the way out of international 5. This shift in emphasis began in the early to mid-1980s, with the publication of William Kirby's Germany and Republican China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984). Preliminary research on my forthcoming book, Strong Institutions in Weak Polities: Personnel Policies and State Building in China, 1927-40 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) was conducted in 1987-89. At present there is a significant cadre of graduate students from programmes in history and political science at Harvard, Berkeley, and Washington University, St. Louis who are in some stage of writing or research on Ph.D. dissertations that address such different aspects of Republican government as constitution-drafting, the KMT' s efforts to combat low-level corruption, and water conservancy. Even within the People's Republic, scholars are also beginning to reconsider the Republican period in a more sympathetic light: Nanjing University Press began publication of Minguo yanjiu (Studies on Republican China) with an editorial board of members from China and abroad, in summer 1995. post-1949 periods. As in addition the People's Republic has renounced its earlier radical vision of revolution, and the post-1986 political liberaliza￾tion in Taiwan proceeds, the year 1949 increasingly seems to be less of the all-encompassing prism through which all perspectives on the preced￾ing Republican period are necessarily and inevitably refracted. Research on Republican-era government and administration is now beginning to shift away from explaining the outcome of the civil war in terms of the KMT regime's undeniable weaknesses, and towards evaluat￾ing what Republican governments attempted to do, given the context and constraints of their own times, to overcome those weaknesses.5 Current work has just begun to scratch the surface, and many basic questions about Republican-era government, particularly those concerning the relations between the different levels of central, provincial and local government, remain unanswered. This article concentrates on central government in the Republican period and develops three preliminary themes: that despite changes in regime, Republican-era governments were characterized by a surprising consistency in terms of basic agenda and constraints on action; that this agenda pushed all Republican-era govern￾ments to attempt to build institutional capacity rapidly; and that to this end, Republican-era governments experimented widely and intensively with models drawn from elsewhere, recombined these models with long-standing Chinese norms of statecraft and governance and produced a wide variety of new hybrids - often only partially reconcilable - in different sectors of the central government. Executive Agendas and Institutional Weaknesses Despite obvious and important changes in regime and government organization - from presidential dictatorship in the 1910s, to the Beiyang governments of the 1920s, to the ascendancy of the KMT Party and its National Government in the late 1920s and 1930s - the executives of Republican-era governments were characterized by a quite remarkable consistency in agendas and goals. They were also constrained in achiev￾ing those goals by an equally consistent set of structural constraints. Government in the Republican era inherited substantially intact the late Qing xinzheng (New Government) agenda which held that China de￾pended on a vigorous central state to lead the way out of international 5. This shift in emphasis began in the early to mid-1980s, with the publication of William Kirby's Germany and Republican China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984). Preliminary research on my forthcoming book, Strong Institutions in Weak Polities: Personnel Policies and State Building in China, 1927-40 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) was conducted in 1987-89. At present there is a significant cadre of graduate students from programmes in history and political science at Harvard, Berkeley, and Washington University, St. Louis who are in some stage of writing or research on Ph.D. dissertations that address such different aspects of Republican government as constitution-drafting, the KMT' s efforts to combat low-level corruption, and water conservancy. Even within the People's Republic, scholars are also beginning to reconsider the Republican period in a more sympathetic light: Nanjing University Press began publication of Minguo yanjiu (Studies on Republican China) with an editorial board of members from China and abroad, in summer 1995. post-1949 periods. As in addition the People's Republic has renounced its earlier radical vision of revolution, and the post-1986 political liberaliza￾tion in Taiwan proceeds, the year 1949 increasingly seems to be less of the all-encompassing prism through which all perspectives on the preced￾ing Republican period are necessarily and inevitably refracted. Research on Republican-era government and administration is now beginning to shift away from explaining the outcome of the civil war in terms of the KMT regime's undeniable weaknesses, and towards evaluat￾ing what Republican governments attempted to do, given the context and constraints of their own times, to overcome those weaknesses.5 Current work has just begun to scratch the surface, and many basic questions about Republican-era government, particularly those concerning the relations between the different levels of central, provincial and local government, remain unanswered. This article concentrates on central government in the Republican period and develops three preliminary themes: that despite changes in regime, Republican-era governments were characterized by a surprising consistency in terms of basic agenda and constraints on action; that this agenda pushed all Republican-era govern￾ments to attempt to build institutional capacity rapidly; and that to this end, Republican-era governments experimented widely and intensively with models drawn from elsewhere, recombined these models with long-standing Chinese norms of statecraft and governance and produced a wide variety of new hybrids - often only partially reconcilable - in different sectors of the central government. Executive Agendas and Institutional Weaknesses Despite obvious and important changes in regime and government organization - from presidential dictatorship in the 1910s, to the Beiyang governments of the 1920s, to the ascendancy of the KMT Party and its National Government in the late 1920s and 1930s - the executives of Republican-era governments were characterized by a quite remarkable consistency in agendas and goals. They were also constrained in achiev￾ing those goals by an equally consistent set of structural constraints. Government in the Republican era inherited substantially intact the late Qing xinzheng (New Government) agenda which held that China de￾pended on a vigorous central state to lead the way out of international 5. This shift in emphasis began in the early to mid-1980s, with the publication of William Kirby's Germany and Republican China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984). Preliminary research on my forthcoming book, Strong Institutions in Weak Polities: Personnel Policies and State Building in China, 1927-40 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) was conducted in 1987-89. At present there is a significant cadre of graduate students from programmes in history and political science at Harvard, Berkeley, and Washington University, St. Louis who are in some stage of writing or research on Ph.D. dissertations that address such different aspects of Republican government as constitution-drafting, the KMT' s efforts to combat low-level corruption, and water conservancy. Even within the People's Republic, scholars are also beginning to reconsider the Republican period in a more sympathetic light: Nanjing University Press began publication of Minguo yanjiu (Studies on Republican China) with an editorial board of members from China and abroad, in summer 1995. post-1949 periods. As in addition the People's Republic has renounced its earlier radical vision of revolution, and the post-1986 political liberaliza￾tion in Taiwan proceeds, the year 1949 increasingly seems to be less of the all-encompassing prism through which all perspectives on the preced￾ing Republican period are necessarily and inevitably refracted. Research on Republican-era government and administration is now beginning to shift away from explaining the outcome of the civil war in terms of the KMT regime's undeniable weaknesses, and towards evaluat￾ing what Republican governments attempted to do, given the context and constraints of their own times, to overcome those weaknesses.5 Current work has just begun to scratch the surface, and many basic questions about Republican-era government, particularly those concerning the relations between the different levels of central, provincial and local government, remain unanswered. This article concentrates on central government in the Republican period and develops three preliminary themes: that despite changes in regime, Republican-era governments were characterized by a surprising consistency in terms of basic agenda and constraints on action; that this agenda pushed all Republican-era govern￾ments to attempt to build institutional capacity rapidly; and that to this end, Republican-era governments experimented widely and intensively with models drawn from elsewhere, recombined these models with long-standing Chinese norms of statecraft and governance and produced a wide variety of new hybrids - often only partially reconcilable - in different sectors of the central government. Executive Agendas and Institutional Weaknesses Despite obvious and important changes in regime and government organization - from presidential dictatorship in the 1910s, to the Beiyang governments of the 1920s, to the ascendancy of the KMT Party and its National Government in the late 1920s and 1930s - the executives of Republican-era governments were characterized by a quite remarkable consistency in agendas and goals. They were also constrained in achiev￾ing those goals by an equally consistent set of structural constraints. Government in the Republican era inherited substantially intact the late Qing xinzheng (New Government) agenda which held that China de￾pended on a vigorous central state to lead the way out of international 5. This shift in emphasis began in the early to mid-1980s, with the publication of William Kirby's Germany and Republican China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984). Preliminary research on my forthcoming book, Strong Institutions in Weak Polities: Personnel Policies and State Building in China, 1927-40 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) was conducted in 1987-89. At present there is a significant cadre of graduate students from programmes in history and political science at Harvard, Berkeley, and Washington University, St. Louis who are in some stage of writing or research on Ph.D. dissertations that address such different aspects of Republican government as constitution-drafting, the KMT' s efforts to combat low-level corruption, and water conservancy. Even within the People's Republic, scholars are also beginning to reconsider the Republican period in a more sympathetic light: Nanjing University Press began publication of Minguo yanjiu (Studies on Republican China) with an editorial board of members from China and abroad, in summer 1995. post-1949 periods. As in addition the People's Republic has renounced its earlier radical vision of revolution, and the post-1986 political liberaliza￾tion in Taiwan proceeds, the year 1949 increasingly seems to be less of the all-encompassing prism through which all perspectives on the preced￾ing Republican period are necessarily and inevitably refracted. Research on Republican-era government and administration is now beginning to shift away from explaining the outcome of the civil war in terms of the KMT regime's undeniable weaknesses, and towards evaluat￾ing what Republican governments attempted to do, given the context and constraints of their own times, to overcome those weaknesses.5 Current work has just begun to scratch the surface, and many basic questions about Republican-era government, particularly those concerning the relations between the different levels of central, provincial and local government, remain unanswered. This article concentrates on central government in the Republican period and develops three preliminary themes: that despite changes in regime, Republican-era governments were characterized by a surprising consistency in terms of basic agenda and constraints on action; that this agenda pushed all Republican-era govern￾ments to attempt to build institutional capacity rapidly; and that to this end, Republican-era governments experimented widely and intensively with models drawn from elsewhere, recombined these models with long-standing Chinese norms of statecraft and governance and produced a wide variety of new hybrids - often only partially reconcilable - in different sectors of the central government. Executive Agendas and Institutional Weaknesses Despite obvious and important changes in regime and government organization - from presidential dictatorship in the 1910s, to the Beiyang governments of the 1920s, to the ascendancy of the KMT Party and its National Government in the late 1920s and 1930s - the executives of Republican-era governments were characterized by a quite remarkable consistency in agendas and goals. They were also constrained in achiev￾ing those goals by an equally consistent set of structural constraints. Government in the Republican era inherited substantially intact the late Qing xinzheng (New Government) agenda which held that China de￾pended on a vigorous central state to lead the way out of international 5. This shift in emphasis began in the early to mid-1980s, with the publication of William Kirby's Germany and Republican China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984). Preliminary research on my forthcoming book, Strong Institutions in Weak Polities: Personnel Policies and State Building in China, 1927-40 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) was conducted in 1987-89. At present there is a significant cadre of graduate students from programmes in history and political science at Harvard, Berkeley, and Washington University, St. Louis who are in some stage of writing or research on Ph.D. dissertations that address such different aspects of Republican government as constitution-drafting, the KMT' s efforts to combat low-level corruption, and water conservancy. Even within the People's Republic, scholars are also beginning to reconsider the Republican period in a more sympathetic light: Nanjing University Press began publication of Minguo yanjiu (Studies on Republican China) with an editorial board of members from China and abroad, in summer 1995. post-1949 periods. As in addition the People's Republic has renounced its earlier radical vision of revolution, and the post-1986 political liberaliza￾tion in Taiwan proceeds, the year 1949 increasingly seems to be less of the all-encompassing prism through which all perspectives on the preced￾ing Republican period are necessarily and inevitably refracted. Research on Republican-era government and administration is now beginning to shift away from explaining the outcome of the civil war in terms of the KMT regime's undeniable weaknesses, and towards evaluat￾ing what Republican governments attempted to do, given the context and constraints of their own times, to overcome those weaknesses.5 Current work has just begun to scratch the surface, and many basic questions about Republican-era government, particularly those concerning the relations between the different levels of central, provincial and local government, remain unanswered. This article concentrates on central government in the Republican period and develops three preliminary themes: that despite changes in regime, Republican-era governments were characterized by a surprising consistency in terms of basic agenda and constraints on action; that this agenda pushed all Republican-era govern￾ments to attempt to build institutional capacity rapidly; and that to this end, Republican-era governments experimented widely and intensively with models drawn from elsewhere, recombined these models with long-standing Chinese norms of statecraft and governance and produced a wide variety of new hybrids - often only partially reconcilable - in different sectors of the central government. Executive Agendas and Institutional Weaknesses Despite obvious and important changes in regime and government organization - from presidential dictatorship in the 1910s, to the Beiyang governments of the 1920s, to the ascendancy of the KMT Party and its National Government in the late 1920s and 1930s - the executives of Republican-era governments were characterized by a quite remarkable consistency in agendas and goals. They were also constrained in achiev￾ing those goals by an equally consistent set of structural constraints. Government in the Republican era inherited substantially intact the late Qing xinzheng (New Government) agenda which held that China de￾pended on a vigorous central state to lead the way out of international 5. This shift in emphasis began in the early to mid-1980s, with the publication of William Kirby's Germany and Republican China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984). Preliminary research on my forthcoming book, Strong Institutions in Weak Polities: Personnel Policies and State Building in China, 1927-40 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) was conducted in 1987-89. At present there is a significant cadre of graduate students from programmes in history and political science at Harvard, Berkeley, and Washington University, St. Louis who are in some stage of writing or research on Ph.D. dissertations that address such different aspects of Republican government as constitution-drafting, the KMT' s efforts to combat low-level corruption, and water conservancy. Even within the People's Republic, scholars are also beginning to reconsider the Republican period in a more sympathetic light: Nanjing University Press began publication of Minguo yanjiu (Studies on Republican China) with an editorial board of members from China and abroad, in summer 1995. post-1949 periods. As in addition the People's Republic has renounced its earlier radical vision of revolution, and the post-1986 political liberaliza￾tion in Taiwan proceeds, the year 1949 increasingly seems to be less of the all-encompassing prism through which all perspectives on the preced￾ing Republican period are necessarily and inevitably refracted. Research on Republican-era government and administration is now beginning to shift away from explaining the outcome of the civil war in terms of the KMT regime's undeniable weaknesses, and towards evaluat￾ing what Republican governments attempted to do, given the context and constraints of their own times, to overcome those weaknesses.5 Current work has just begun to scratch the surface, and many basic questions about Republican-era government, particularly those concerning the relations between the different levels of central, provincial and local government, remain unanswered. This article concentrates on central government in the Republican period and develops three preliminary themes: that despite changes in regime, Republican-era governments were characterized by a surprising consistency in terms of basic agenda and constraints on action; that this agenda pushed all Republican-era govern￾ments to attempt to build institutional capacity rapidly; and that to this end, Republican-era governments experimented widely and intensively with models drawn from elsewhere, recombined these models with long-standing Chinese norms of statecraft and governance and produced a wide variety of new hybrids - often only partially reconcilable - in different sectors of the central government. Executive Agendas and Institutional Weaknesses Despite obvious and important changes in regime and government organization - from presidential dictatorship in the 1910s, to the Beiyang governments of the 1920s, to the ascendancy of the KMT Party and its National Government in the late 1920s and 1930s - the executives of Republican-era governments were characterized by a quite remarkable consistency in agendas and goals. They were also constrained in achiev￾ing those goals by an equally consistent set of structural constraints. Government in the Republican era inherited substantially intact the late Qing xinzheng (New Government) agenda which held that China de￾pended on a vigorous central state to lead the way out of international 5. This shift in emphasis began in the early to mid-1980s, with the publication of William Kirby's Germany and Republican China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984). Preliminary research on my forthcoming book, Strong Institutions in Weak Polities: Personnel Policies and State Building in China, 1927-40 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) was conducted in 1987-89. At present there is a significant cadre of graduate students from programmes in history and political science at Harvard, Berkeley, and Washington University, St. Louis who are in some stage of writing or research on Ph.D. dissertations that address such different aspects of Republican government as constitution-drafting, the KMT' s efforts to combat low-level corruption, and water conservancy. Even within the People's Republic, scholars are also beginning to reconsider the Republican period in a more sympathetic light: Nanjing University Press began publication of Minguo yanjiu (Studies on Republican China) with an editorial board of members from China and abroad, in summer 1995. post-1949 periods. As in addition the People's Republic has renounced its earlier radical vision of revolution, and the post-1986 political liberaliza￾tion in Taiwan proceeds, the year 1949 increasingly seems to be less of the all-encompassing prism through which all perspectives on the preced￾ing Republican period are necessarily and inevitably refracted. Research on Republican-era government and administration is now beginning to shift away from explaining the outcome of the civil war in terms of the KMT regime's undeniable weaknesses, and towards evaluat￾ing what Republican governments attempted to do, given the context and constraints of their own times, to overcome those weaknesses.5 Current work has just begun to scratch the surface, and many basic questions about Republican-era government, particularly those concerning the relations between the different levels of central, provincial and local government, remain unanswered. This article concentrates on central government in the Republican period and develops three preliminary themes: that despite changes in regime, Republican-era governments were characterized by a surprising consistency in terms of basic agenda and constraints on action; that this agenda pushed all Republican-era govern￾ments to attempt to build institutional capacity rapidly; and that to this end, Republican-era governments experimented widely and intensively with models drawn from elsewhere, recombined these models with long-standing Chinese norms of statecraft and governance and produced a wide variety of new hybrids - often only partially reconcilable - in different sectors of the central government. Executive Agendas and Institutional Weaknesses Despite obvious and important changes in regime and government organization - from presidential dictatorship in the 1910s, to the Beiyang governments of the 1920s, to the ascendancy of the KMT Party and its National Government in the late 1920s and 1930s - the executives of Republican-era governments were characterized by a quite remarkable consistency in agendas and goals. They were also constrained in achiev￾ing those goals by an equally consistent set of structural constraints. Government in the Republican era inherited substantially intact the late Qing xinzheng (New Government) agenda which held that China de￾pended on a vigorous central state to lead the way out of international 5. This shift in emphasis began in the early to mid-1980s, with the publication of William Kirby's Germany and Republican China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984). Preliminary research on my forthcoming book, Strong Institutions in Weak Polities: Personnel Policies and State Building in China, 1927-40 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) was conducted in 1987-89. At present there is a significant cadre of graduate students from programmes in history and political science at Harvard, Berkeley, and Washington University, St. Louis who are in some stage of writing or research on Ph.D. dissertations that address such different aspects of Republican government as constitution-drafting, the KMT' s efforts to combat low-level corruption, and water conservancy. Even within the People's Republic, scholars are also beginning to reconsider the Republican period in a more sympathetic light: Nanjing University Press began publication of Minguo yanjiu (Studies on Republican China) with an editorial board of members from China and abroad, in summer 1995. post-1949 periods. As in addition the People's Republic has renounced its earlier radical vision of revolution, and the post-1986 political liberaliza￾tion in Taiwan proceeds, the year 1949 increasingly seems to be less of the all-encompassing prism through which all perspectives on the preced￾ing Republican period are necessarily and inevitably refracted. Research on Republican-era government and administration is now beginning to shift away from explaining the outcome of the civil war in terms of the KMT regime's undeniable weaknesses, and towards evaluat￾ing what Republican governments attempted to do, given the context and constraints of their own times, to overcome those weaknesses.5 Current work has just begun to scratch the surface, and many basic questions about Republican-era government, particularly those concerning the relations between the different levels of central, provincial and local government, remain unanswered. This article concentrates on central government in the Republican period and develops three preliminary themes: that despite changes in regime, Republican-era governments were characterized by a surprising consistency in terms of basic agenda and constraints on action; that this agenda pushed all Republican-era govern￾ments to attempt to build institutional capacity rapidly; and that to this end, Republican-era governments experimented widely and intensively with models drawn from elsewhere, recombined these models with long-standing Chinese norms of statecraft and governance and produced a wide variety of new hybrids - often only partially reconcilable - in different sectors of the central government. Executive Agendas and Institutional Weaknesses Despite obvious and important changes in regime and government organization - from presidential dictatorship in the 1910s, to the Beiyang governments of the 1920s, to the ascendancy of the KMT Party and its National Government in the late 1920s and 1930s - the executives of Republican-era governments were characterized by a quite remarkable consistency in agendas and goals. They were also constrained in achiev￾ing those goals by an equally consistent set of structural constraints. Government in the Republican era inherited substantially intact the late Qing xinzheng (New Government) agenda which held that China de￾pended on a vigorous central state to lead the way out of international 5. This shift in emphasis began in the early to mid-1980s, with the publication of William Kirby's Germany and Republican China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984). Preliminary research on my forthcoming book, Strong Institutions in Weak Polities: Personnel Policies and State Building in China, 1927-40 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) was conducted in 1987-89. At present there is a significant cadre of graduate students from programmes in history and political science at Harvard, Berkeley, and Washington University, St. Louis who are in some stage of writing or research on Ph.D. dissertations that address such different aspects of Republican government as constitution-drafting, the KMT' s efforts to combat low-level corruption, and water conservancy. Even within the People's Republic, scholars are also beginning to reconsider the Republican period in a more sympathetic light: Nanjing University Press began publication of Minguo yanjiu (Studies on Republican China) with an editorial board of members from China and abroad, in summer 1995. post-1949 periods. As in addition the People's Republic has renounced its earlier radical vision of revolution, and the post-1986 political liberaliza￾tion in Taiwan proceeds, the year 1949 increasingly seems to be less of the all-encompassing prism through which all perspectives on the preced￾ing Republican period are necessarily and inevitably refracted. Research on Republican-era government and administration is now beginning to shift away from explaining the outcome of the civil war in terms of the KMT regime's undeniable weaknesses, and towards evaluat￾ing what Republican governments attempted to do, given the context and constraints of their own times, to overcome those weaknesses.5 Current work has just begun to scratch the surface, and many basic questions about Republican-era government, particularly those concerning the relations between the different levels of central, provincial and local government, remain unanswered. This article concentrates on central government in the Republican period and develops three preliminary themes: that despite changes in regime, Republican-era governments were characterized by a surprising consistency in terms of basic agenda and constraints on action; that this agenda pushed all Republican-era govern￾ments to attempt to build institutional capacity rapidly; and that to this end, Republican-era governments experimented widely and intensively with models drawn from elsewhere, recombined these models with long-standing Chinese norms of statecraft and governance and produced a wide variety of new hybrids - often only partially reconcilable - in different sectors of the central government. Executive Agendas and Institutional Weaknesses Despite obvious and important changes in regime and government organization - from presidential dictatorship in the 1910s, to the Beiyang governments of the 1920s, to the ascendancy of the KMT Party and its National Government in the late 1920s and 1930s - the executives of Republican-era governments were characterized by a quite remarkable consistency in agendas and goals. They were also constrained in achiev￾ing those goals by an equally consistent set of structural constraints. Government in the Republican era inherited substantially intact the late Qing xinzheng (New Government) agenda which held that China de￾pended on a vigorous central state to lead the way out of international 5. This shift in emphasis began in the early to mid-1980s, with the publication of William Kirby's Germany and Republican China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984). Preliminary research on my forthcoming book, Strong Institutions in Weak Polities: Personnel Policies and State Building in China, 1927-40 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) was conducted in 1987-89. At present there is a significant cadre of graduate students from programmes in history and political science at Harvard, Berkeley, and Washington University, St. Louis who are in some stage of writing or research on Ph.D. dissertations that address such different aspects of Republican government as constitution-drafting, the KMT' s efforts to combat low-level corruption, and water conservancy. Even within the People's Republic, scholars are also beginning to reconsider the Republican period in a more sympathetic light: Nanjing University Press began publication of Minguo yanjiu (Studies on Republican China) with an editorial board of members from China and abroad, in summer 1995. post-1949 periods. As in addition the People's Republic has renounced its earlier radical vision of revolution, and the post-1986 political liberaliza￾tion in Taiwan proceeds, the year 1949 increasingly seems to be less of the all-encompassing prism through which all perspectives on the preced￾ing Republican period are necessarily and inevitably refracted. Research on Republican-era government and administration is now beginning to shift away from explaining the outcome of the civil war in terms of the KMT regime's undeniable weaknesses, and towards evaluat￾ing what Republican governments attempted to do, given the context and constraints of their own times, to overcome those weaknesses.5 Current work has just begun to scratch the surface, and many basic questions about Republican-era government, particularly those concerning the relations between the different levels of central, provincial and local government, remain unanswered. This article concentrates on central government in the Republican period and develops three preliminary themes: that despite changes in regime, Republican-era governments were characterized by a surprising consistency in terms of basic agenda and constraints on action; that this agenda pushed all Republican-era govern￾ments to attempt to build institutional capacity rapidly; and that to this end, Republican-era governments experimented widely and intensively with models drawn from elsewhere, recombined these models with long-standing Chinese norms of statecraft and governance and produced a wide variety of new hybrids - often only partially reconcilable - in different sectors of the central government. Executive Agendas and Institutional Weaknesses Despite obvious and important changes in regime and government organization - from presidential dictatorship in the 1910s, to the Beiyang governments of the 1920s, to the ascendancy of the KMT Party and its National Government in the late 1920s and 1930s - the executives of Republican-era governments were characterized by a quite remarkable consistency in agendas and goals. They were also constrained in achiev￾ing those goals by an equally consistent set of structural constraints. Government in the Republican era inherited substantially intact the late Qing xinzheng (New Government) agenda which held that China de￾pended on a vigorous central state to lead the way out of international 5. This shift in emphasis began in the early to mid-1980s, with the publication of William Kirby's Germany and Republican China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984). Preliminary research on my forthcoming book, Strong Institutions in Weak Polities: Personnel Policies and State Building in China, 1927-40 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) was conducted in 1987-89. At present there is a significant cadre of graduate students from programmes in history and political science at Harvard, Berkeley, and Washington University, St. Louis who are in some stage of writing or research on Ph.D. dissertations that address such different aspects of Republican government as constitution-drafting, the KMT' s efforts to combat low-level corruption, and water conservancy. Even within the People's Republic, scholars are also beginning to reconsider the Republican period in a more sympathetic light: Nanjing University Press began publication of Minguo yanjiu (Studies on Republican China) with an editorial board of members from China and abroad, in summer 1995. post-1949 periods. As in addition the People's Republic has renounced its earlier radical vision of revolution, and the post-1986 political liberaliza￾tion in Taiwan proceeds, the year 1949 increasingly seems to be less of the all-encompassing prism through which all perspectives on the preced￾ing Republican period are necessarily and inevitably refracted. Research on Republican-era government and administration is now beginning to shift away from explaining the outcome of the civil war in terms of the KMT regime's undeniable weaknesses, and towards evaluat￾ing what Republican governments attempted to do, given the context and constraints of their own times, to overcome those weaknesses.5 Current work has just begun to scratch the surface, and many basic questions about Republican-era government, particularly those concerning the relations between the different levels of central, provincial and local government, remain unanswered. This article concentrates on central government in the Republican period and develops three preliminary themes: that despite changes in regime, Republican-era governments were characterized by a surprising consistency in terms of basic agenda and constraints on action; that this agenda pushed all Republican-era govern￾ments to attempt to build institutional capacity rapidly; and that to this end, Republican-era governments experimented widely and intensively with models drawn from elsewhere, recombined these models with long-standing Chinese norms of statecraft and governance and produced a wide variety of new hybrids - often only partially reconcilable - in different sectors of the central government. Executive Agendas and Institutional Weaknesses Despite obvious and important changes in regime and government organization - from presidential dictatorship in the 1910s, to the Beiyang governments of the 1920s, to the ascendancy of the KMT Party and its National Government in the late 1920s and 1930s - the executives of Republican-era governments were characterized by a quite remarkable consistency in agendas and goals. They were also constrained in achiev￾ing those goals by an equally consistent set of structural constraints. Government in the Republican era inherited substantially intact the late Qing xinzheng (New Government) agenda which held that China de￾pended on a vigorous central state to lead the way out of international 5. This shift in emphasis began in the early to mid-1980s, with the publication of William Kirby's Germany and Republican China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984). Preliminary research on my forthcoming book, Strong Institutions in Weak Polities: Personnel Policies and State Building in China, 1927-40 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) was conducted in 1987-89. At present there is a significant cadre of graduate students from programmes in history and political science at Harvard, Berkeley, and Washington University, St. Louis who are in some stage of writing or research on Ph.D. dissertations that address such different aspects of Republican government as constitution-drafting, the KMT' s efforts to combat low-level corruption, and water conservancy. Even within the People's Republic, scholars are also beginning to reconsider the Republican period in a more sympathetic light: Nanjing University Press began publication of Minguo yanjiu (Studies on Republican China) with an editorial board of members from China and abroad, in summer 1995. post-1949 periods. As in addition the People's Republic has renounced its earlier radical vision of revolution, and the post-1986 political liberaliza￾tion in Taiwan proceeds, the year 1949 increasingly seems to be less of the all-encompassing prism through which all perspectives on the preced￾ing Republican period are necessarily and inevitably refracted. Research on Republican-era government and administration is now beginning to shift away from explaining the outcome of the civil war in terms of the KMT regime's undeniable weaknesses, and towards evaluat￾ing what Republican governments attempted to do, given the context and constraints of their own times, to overcome those weaknesses.5 Current work has just begun to scratch the surface, and many basic questions about Republican-era government, particularly those concerning the relations between the different levels of central, provincial and local government, remain unanswered. This article concentrates on central government in the Republican period and develops three preliminary themes: that despite changes in regime, Republican-era governments were characterized by a surprising consistency in terms of basic agenda and constraints on action; that this agenda pushed all Republican-era govern￾ments to attempt to build institutional capacity rapidly; and that to this end, Republican-era governments experimented widely and intensively with models drawn from elsewhere, recombined these models with long-standing Chinese norms of statecraft and governance and produced a wide variety of new hybrids - often only partially reconcilable - in different sectors of the central government. Executive Agendas and Institutional Weaknesses Despite obvious and important changes in regime and government organization - from presidential dictatorship in the 1910s, to the Beiyang governments of the 1920s, to the ascendancy of the KMT Party and its National Government in the late 1920s and 1930s - the executives of Republican-era governments were characterized by a quite remarkable consistency in agendas and goals. They were also constrained in achiev￾ing those goals by an equally consistent set of structural constraints. Government in the Republican era inherited substantially intact the late Qing xinzheng (New Government) agenda which held that China de￾pended on a vigorous central state to lead the way out of international 5. This shift in emphasis began in the early to mid-1980s, with the publication of William Kirby's Germany and Republican China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984). Preliminary research on my forthcoming book, Strong Institutions in Weak Polities: Personnel Policies and State Building in China, 1927-40 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) was conducted in 1987-89. At present there is a significant cadre of graduate students from programmes in history and political science at Harvard, Berkeley, and Washington University, St. Louis who are in some stage of writing or research on Ph.D. dissertations that address such different aspects of Republican government as constitution-drafting, the KMT' s efforts to combat low-level corruption, and water conservancy. Even within the People's Republic, scholars are also beginning to reconsider the Republican period in a more sympathetic light: Nanjing University Press began publication of Minguo yanjiu (Studies on Republican China) with an editorial board of members from China and abroad, in summer 1995. post-1949 periods. As in addition the People's Republic has renounced its earlier radical vision of revolution, and the post-1986 political liberaliza￾tion in Taiwan proceeds, the year 1949 increasingly seems to be less of the all-encompassing prism through which all perspectives on the preced￾ing Republican period are necessarily and inevitably refracted. Research on Republican-era government and administration is now beginning to shift away from explaining the outcome of the civil war in terms of the KMT regime's undeniable weaknesses, and towards evaluat￾ing what Republican governments attempted to do, given the context and constraints of their own times, to overcome those weaknesses.5 Current work has just begun to scratch the surface, and many basic questions about Republican-era government, particularly those concerning the relations between the different levels of central, provincial and local government, remain unanswered. This article concentrates on central government in the Republican period and develops three preliminary themes: that despite changes in regime, Republican-era governments were characterized by a surprising consistency in terms of basic agenda and constraints on action; that this agenda pushed all Republican-era govern￾ments to attempt to build institutional capacity rapidly; and that to this end, Republican-era governments experimented widely and intensively with models drawn from elsewhere, recombined these models with long-standing Chinese norms of statecraft and governance and produced a wide variety of new hybrids - often only partially reconcilable - in different sectors of the central government. Executive Agendas and Institutional Weaknesses Despite obvious and important changes in regime and government organization - from presidential dictatorship in the 1910s, to the Beiyang governments of the 1920s, to the ascendancy of the KMT Party and its National Government in the late 1920s and 1930s - the executives of Republican-era governments were characterized by a quite remarkable consistency in agendas and goals. They were also constrained in achiev￾ing those goals by an equally consistent set of structural constraints. Government in the Republican era inherited substantially intact the late Qing xinzheng (New Government) agenda which held that China de￾pended on a vigorous central state to lead the way out of international 5. This shift in emphasis began in the early to mid-1980s, with the publication of William Kirby's Germany and Republican China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984). Preliminary research on my forthcoming book, Strong Institutions in Weak Polities: Personnel Policies and State Building in China, 1927-40 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) was conducted in 1987-89. At present there is a significant cadre of graduate students from programmes in history and political science at Harvard, Berkeley, and Washington University, St. Louis who are in some stage of writing or research on Ph.D. dissertations that address such different aspects of Republican government as constitution-drafting, the KMT' s efforts to combat low-level corruption, and water conservancy. Even within the People's Republic, scholars are also beginning to reconsider the Republican period in a more sympathetic light: Nanjing University Press began publication of Minguo yanjiu (Studies on Republican China) with an editorial board of members from China and abroad, in summer 1995. post-1949 periods. As in addition the People's Republic has renounced its earlier radical vision of revolution, and the post-1986 political liberaliza￾tion in Taiwan proceeds, the year 1949 increasingly seems to be less of the all-encompassing prism through which all perspectives on the preced￾ing Republican period are necessarily and inevitably refracted. Research on Republican-era government and administration is now beginning to shift away from explaining the outcome of the civil war in terms of the KMT regime's undeniable weaknesses, and towards evaluat￾ing what Republican governments attempted to do, given the context and constraints of their own times, to overcome those weaknesses.5 Current work has just begun to scratch the surface, and many basic questions about Republican-era government, particularly those concerning the relations between the different levels of central, provincial and local government, remain unanswered. This article concentrates on central government in the Republican period and develops three preliminary themes: that despite changes in regime, Republican-era governments were characterized by a surprising consistency in terms of basic agenda and constraints on action; that this agenda pushed all Republican-era govern￾ments to attempt to build institutional capacity rapidly; and that to this end, Republican-era governments experimented widely and intensively with models drawn from elsewhere, recombined these models with long-standing Chinese norms of statecraft and governance and produced a wide variety of new hybrids - often only partially reconcilable - in different sectors of the central government. Executive Agendas and Institutional Weaknesses Despite obvious and important changes in regime and government organization - from presidential dictatorship in the 1910s, to the Beiyang governments of the 1920s, to the ascendancy of the KMT Party and its National Government in the late 1920s and 1930s - the executives of Republican-era governments were characterized by a quite remarkable consistency in agendas and goals. They were also constrained in achiev￾ing those goals by an equally consistent set of structural constraints. Government in the Republican era inherited substantially intact the late Qing xinzheng (New Government) agenda which held that China de￾pended on a vigorous central state to lead the way out of international 5. This shift in emphasis began in the early to mid-1980s, with the publication of William Kirby's Germany and Republican China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984). Preliminary research on my forthcoming book, Strong Institutions in Weak Polities: Personnel Policies and State Building in China, 1927-40 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) was conducted in 1987-89. At present there is a significant cadre of graduate students from programmes in history and political science at Harvard, Berkeley, and Washington University, St. Louis who are in some stage of writing or research on Ph.D. dissertations that address such different aspects of Republican government as constitution-drafting, the KMT' s efforts to combat low-level corruption, and water conservancy. Even within the People's Republic, scholars are also beginning to reconsider the Republican period in a more sympathetic light: Nanjing University Press began publication of Minguo yanjiu (Studies on Republican China) with an editorial board of members from China and abroad, in summer 1995. post-1949 periods. As in addition the People's Republic has renounced its earlier radical vision of revolution, and the post-1986 political liberaliza￾tion in Taiwan proceeds, the year 1949 increasingly seems to be less of the all-encompassing prism through which all perspectives on the preced￾ing Republican period are necessarily and inevitably refracted. Research on Republican-era government and administration is now beginning to shift away from explaining the outcome of the civil war in terms of the KMT regime's undeniable weaknesses, and towards evaluat￾ing what Republican governments attempted to do, given the context and constraints of their own times, to overcome those weaknesses.5 Current work has just begun to scratch the surface, and many basic questions about Republican-era government, particularly those concerning the relations between the different levels of central, provincial and local government, remain unanswered. This article concentrates on central government in the Republican period and develops three preliminary themes: that despite changes in regime, Republican-era governments were characterized by a surprising consistency in terms of basic agenda and constraints on action; that this agenda pushed all Republican-era govern￾ments to attempt to build institutional capacity rapidly; and that to this end, Republican-era governments experimented widely and intensively with models drawn from elsewhere, recombined these models with long-standing Chinese norms of statecraft and governance and produced a wide variety of new hybrids - often only partially reconcilable - in different sectors of the central government. Executive Agendas and Institutional Weaknesses Despite obvious and important changes in regime and government organization - from presidential dictatorship in the 1910s, to the Beiyang governments of the 1920s, to the ascendancy of the KMT Party and its National Government in the late 1920s and 1930s - the executives of Republican-era governments were characterized by a quite remarkable consistency in agendas and goals. They were also constrained in achiev￾ing those goals by an equally consistent set of structural constraints. Government in the Republican era inherited substantially intact the late Qing xinzheng (New Government) agenda which held that China de￾pended on a vigorous central state to lead the way out of international 5. This shift in emphasis began in the early to mid-1980s, with the publication of William Kirby's Germany and Republican China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984). Preliminary research on my forthcoming book, Strong Institutions in Weak Polities: Personnel Policies and State Building in China, 1927-40 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) was conducted in 1987-89. At present there is a significant cadre of graduate students from programmes in history and political science at Harvard, Berkeley, and Washington University, St. Louis who are in some stage of writing or research on Ph.D. dissertations that address such different aspects of Republican government as constitution-drafting, the KMT' s efforts to combat low-level corruption, and water conservancy. Even within the People's Republic, scholars are also beginning to reconsider the Republican period in a more sympathetic light: Nanjing University Press began publication of Minguo yanjiu (Studies on Republican China) with an editorial board of members from China and abroad, in summer 1995. post-1949 periods. As in addition the People's Republic has renounced its earlier radical vision of revolution, and the post-1986 political liberaliza￾tion in Taiwan proceeds, the year 1949 increasingly seems to be less of the all-encompassing prism through which all perspectives on the preced￾ing Republican period are necessarily and inevitably refracted. Research on Republican-era government and administration is now beginning to shift away from explaining the outcome of the civil war in terms of the KMT regime's undeniable weaknesses, and towards evaluat￾ing what Republican governments attempted to do, given the context and constraints of their own times, to overcome those weaknesses.5 Current work has just begun to scratch the surface, and many basic questions about Republican-era government, particularly those concerning the relations between the different levels of central, provincial and local government, remain unanswered. This article concentrates on central government in the Republican period and develops three preliminary themes: that despite changes in regime, Republican-era governments were characterized by a surprising consistency in terms of basic agenda and constraints on action; that this agenda pushed all Republican-era govern￾ments to attempt to build institutional capacity rapidly; and that to this end, Republican-era governments experimented widely and intensively with models drawn from elsewhere, recombined these models with long-standing Chinese norms of statecraft and governance and produced a wide variety of new hybrids - often only partially reconcilable - in different sectors of the central government. Executive Agendas and Institutional Weaknesses Despite obvious and important changes in regime and government organization - from presidential dictatorship in the 1910s, to the Beiyang governments of the 1920s, to the ascendancy of the KMT Party and its National Government in the late 1920s and 1930s - the executives of Republican-era governments were characterized by a quite remarkable consistency in agendas and goals. They were also constrained in achiev￾ing those goals by an equally consistent set of structural constraints. Government in the Republican era inherited substantially intact the late Qing xinzheng (New Government) agenda which held that China de￾pended on a vigorous central state to lead the way out of international 5. This shift in emphasis began in the early to mid-1980s, with the publication of William Kirby's Germany and Republican China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984). Preliminary research on my forthcoming book, Strong Institutions in Weak Polities: Personnel Policies and State Building in China, 1927-40 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) was conducted in 1987-89. At present there is a significant cadre of graduate students from programmes in history and political science at Harvard, Berkeley, and Washington University, St. Louis who are in some stage of writing or research on Ph.D. dissertations that address such different aspects of Republican government as constitution-drafting, the KMT' s efforts to combat low-level corruption, and water conservancy. Even within the People's Republic, scholars are also beginning to reconsider the Republican period in a more sympathetic light: Nanjing University Press began publication of Minguo yanjiu (Studies on Republican China) with an editorial board of members from China and abroad, in summer 1995. post-1949 periods. As in addition the People's Republic has renounced its earlier radical vision of revolution, and the post-1986 political liberaliza￾tion in Taiwan proceeds, the year 1949 increasingly seems to be less of the all-encompassing prism through which all perspectives on the preced￾ing Republican period are necessarily and inevitably refracted. Research on Republican-era government and administration is now beginning to shift away from explaining the outcome of the civil war in terms of the KMT regime's undeniable weaknesses, and towards evaluat￾ing what Republican governments attempted to do, given the context and constraints of their own times, to overcome those weaknesses.5 Current work has just begun to scratch the surface, and many basic questions about Republican-era government, particularly those concerning the relations between the different levels of central, provincial and local government, remain unanswered. This article concentrates on central government in the Republican period and develops three preliminary themes: that despite changes in regime, Republican-era governments were characterized by a surprising consistency in terms of basic agenda and constraints on action; that this agenda pushed all Republican-era govern￾ments to attempt to build institutional capacity rapidly; and that to this end, Republican-era governments experimented widely and intensively with models drawn from elsewhere, recombined these models with long-standing Chinese norms of statecraft and governance and produced a wide variety of new hybrids - often only partially reconcilable - in different sectors of the central government. Executive Agendas and Institutional Weaknesses Despite obvious and important changes in regime and government organization - from presidential dictatorship in the 1910s, to the Beiyang governments of the 1920s, to the ascendancy of the KMT Party and its National Government in the late 1920s and 1930s - the executives of Republican-era governments were characterized by a quite remarkable consistency in agendas and goals. They were also constrained in achiev￾ing those goals by an equally consistent set of structural constraints. Government in the Republican era inherited substantially intact the late Qing xinzheng (New Government) agenda which held that China de￾pended on a vigorous central state to lead the way out of international 5. This shift in emphasis began in the early to mid-1980s, with the publication of William Kirby's Germany and Republican China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984). Preliminary research on my forthcoming book, Strong Institutions in Weak Polities: Personnel Policies and State Building in China, 1927-40 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) was conducted in 1987-89. At present there is a significant cadre of graduate students from programmes in history and political science at Harvard, Berkeley, and Washington University, St. Louis who are in some stage of writing or research on Ph.D. dissertations that address such different aspects of Republican government as constitution-drafting, the KMT' s efforts to combat low-level corruption, and water conservancy. Even within the People's Republic, scholars are also beginning to reconsider the Republican period in a more sympathetic light: Nanjing University Press began publication of Minguo yanjiu (Studies on Republican China) with an editorial board of members from China and abroad, in summer 1995. 331