戀戀風塵 Hong Kong

First of all, this is an excellent book focused on the concept and empirical measurement of legitimacy, an idea troubled political science for decades. The author argued that the concept should include three dimensions: legality, justification and consent. The three dimensions can be empirically estimated by surveys and behaviors of citizens.

In Ch.2 the author tested the constructed empirical index. The findings are that the degree of legitimacy is highly correlated with citizen's satisfaction of general governance, income level, gender equality, welfare level, economic governance and national happiness. The following two chapters discussed the changing factors impacted on legitimacy in the long run.

In Ch.5 the author turned to the consequences of legitimacy. The empirical tests showed that the higher degree legitimacy may contribute to state building, but can hardly avoid internal conflicts. Also, a lower degree of legitimacy of authoritarian regime may lead to democratic transition. These findings are very interesting for normative and empirical arguments.

However, the study suffered from three traditional statistical problems: aggregated problem, cross-sectional data and endogenous problem. The first issue is, simply, why the measurement of legality, justification and consent can be add together as one degree of legitimacy? Second, the author only constructed one cut of cross-sectional data, which can hardly argue the changes over time. At last, the endogenous problem among legitimacy, economic performance and the other variables is still concerned.

Chapter 2 and 8 focus on Chinese Authoritarian regime and law system:

Ginsburg, Tom. 2008. "Administrative Law and the Judicial Control of Agents in Authoritarian Regimes." Pp 58-72 in Tom Ginsburg and Tamir Moustafa eds., Rule By Law: The Politics of Courts in Authoritarian Regimes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Landry, Pierre. 2008. "The Institutional Diffusion of Courts in China: Evidence from Survey Data." Pp 207-234 in Tom Ginsburg and Tamir Moustafa eds., Rule By Law: The Politics of Courts in Authoritarian Regimes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chapter 6 is the core of the thick book. Its about the debate of the origins of Industrial Revolution. Chapter 8 is also impressive in terms of claiming that from 1914 to 1939 is a de-globalization world. BTW, Pp. 284-294 is notable if one is interested in the Manchuian trade policies. Table 9.1 (494-5) is also useful to show the declining pattern of the tariffs' standard around the world. On the contrary, the conclusion is not so relevant.