| RESEARCH |

Publications
Teets, Jessica. " Book Review: Pranab Bardhan and Dilip Mookherjee's Decentralization and Local Governance in Developing Countries." Journal of Chinese Politics 13. March 2008.

Lewis, Orion and Jessica Teets. "Chinese Nationalism 1949-1980." Nations and Nationalism in Global Perspective: An Encyclopedia of Origins, Development, and Contemporary Transition. ABC-CLIO. June 2008.

Teets, Jessica." "Post-Earthquake Relief and Reconstruction Efforts: The Emergence of Civil Society in China?" The China Quarterly 198. June 2009: 330-347.

Chenoweth, Erica and Jessica Teets. "To Bribe or Bomb: An Empirical Analysis into the Relationship between Corruption and Terrorism." Corruption, Global Security, and World Order. Robert Rotberg, ed. Washington DC: The Brookings Institution Press. 2009.

Teets, Jessica, Stanley Rosen, and Peter Hays Gries. “Political Change, Contestation and Pluralization in China Today.” Chinese Politics: State, Society and the Market. Peter Gries and Stanley Rosen, eds. New York: RoutledgeCurzon. 2010.

Current Projects
Teets, Jessica. "Varying State-Society Relationships in Authoritarian Regimes: A Relational Model of Civil Society and the Regulatory State in China." Currently under review at World Politics.

Leblang, David, Jennifer Fitzgerald, and Jessica Teets. "Defying the Law of Gravity: The Political Economy of International Migration."

Teets, Jessica. Civil Society without Democracy: Political Participation in Hybrid Regimes. Book Manuscript.

Leblang, David and Jessica Teets. "The Social Determinants of Cross-Border Portfolio Investment in Transition Economies."

Dissertation Research

"Effective Governance in Non-Democracies: The Role of Informal Civil Society in Increasing Pluralism and Accountability in Local Public Policy." successfully defended December 2008.

This research seeks to answer the puzzle of how non-democracies achieve good governance without formal channels of interest articulation and electoral mechanisms of accountability. I argue that civil society groups use informal and personal channels to access the policy-making process. While use of these channels increases pluralism and accountability leading to more effective governance, the informal and personal nature of these channels means that they cannot distinguish easily between groups with private versus public interests. Therefore, while these channels improve governance in non-democracies, they also can lead to the promotion of private interests through the public policy process. Through the use of a cross-national dataset and field work at four sites in China, I provide evidence that social groups do influence the policy process and governance outcomes. The 100 interviews, statistical and archive research I completed in 2006-2007, with support from a NSF grant, indicated that in China social groups increase pluralism in the policy-making process and accountability among local officials, which is similar to the outcomes documented by Robert Putnam and others in democracies. The institutional conditions of non-democracies--lack of transparency and formal institutional channels for accessing the policy process--amplify the role played by these groups. Therefore, this research is vital for understanding the mechanisms by which social groups encourage good governance across all regimes, not just liberal democracies.