Meritocracy Reimagined: Ideational Foundations of State-Building in Imperial China, 2025. Journal of Historical Political Economy: Vol. 4: No. 4, pp 439-469.
From Conquest to Rule: War and Bureaucracy in Imperial China.
How do rulers rebuild governance after regime collapse? While bellicist theories emphasize how external war strengthens institutions, many regimes emerge from collapse—through civil war, revolution, or foreign conquest. In such cases, rulers must reconstruct authority from the ground up. I argue that postwar regimes balance coercion and compliance through bureaucratic appointments. Elites offer legitimacy and administrative expertise, while new entrants—military officers and office purchasers—provide coercive capacity, financial resources, and loyalty. I test this argument using early Qing China, a conquest regime that stabilized rule after prolonged warfare. Drawing on an original dataset of nearly 7,000 bureaucratic appointments and 364 conflict events, I show that violence systematically shaped personnel strategies: new entrants were favored in unstable areas, while traditional elites were retained in stable ones. These findings contribute to scholarship on state-building and authoritarian institutions.
From Empire to Nation-State: Aspirational Nation Building in China, with Haohan Chen and Yingtian He.
The rise of nation-states was one of the most transformative developments of the 20th century. What drives nation-building? Existing theories emphasize enmity: external threats provoke fear, humiliation, and hostility, hardening national identity through opposition. We propose an aspirational theory of nation-building, highlighting a parallel mechanism—emulation. Under threat, elites do not only rally against foreign powers; they also look outward with admiration, comparing their nation to more successful states and seeking to close the gap. This forward-looking ambition can transform crisis into reform. We test this theory by analyzing China’s transition from empire to nationstate (1872–1911), using two original datasets: a complete collection of newspaper titles and full-text articles from Shen Bao, the most influential publication of the period. We find that emulation—particularly of culturally proximate powers like Japan—consistently outweighed enmity. War sparked temporary surges in antagonism, but emulation quickly resurged. This article contributes to scholarship on nation-building and state formation.
Meaning as Might: The Ideational Foundations of State Power, with Charles Chang.
States exercise power not only through coercion, bureaucracy, and infrastructure, but also through the construction of meaning. We introduce ideational capacity as a distinct dimension of state power: the ability to craft and project narratives that foster political identification and legitimize authority. Using original global geocoded data and semantic classification with large language models, we develop a cross-national measure of ideational capacity based on state-sponsored museums. We validate this measure by analyzing its spatial distribution, temporal trends, and associations with conventional indicators of state capacity. We also show that ideational capacity is conceptually and empirically distinct from fiscal capacity. Finally, we demonstrate that higher levels of ideational capacity are linked to greater national pride and political trust. By rendering this often-invisible dimension of power empirically tractable, the study broadens prevailing conceptions of state capacity by demonstrating how states deploy symbolic tools to foster unity, legitimacy, and authority.
Narrating the Nation: Intellectuals as Architects of Nation-Building, with Haohan Chen and Yingtian He.
Ruling after Revolution: Security Challenges and Civilian Control over Military in China, 1949-1976. With Junyan Jiang.
Work in Progress:
Class-making as State-making in Great Britain, with Pablo Beramendi and Adriane Fresh.
Meritocracy and State Building in Great Britain, with Didac Queralt.
Rise of China, with Xiaonan Wang.
Book Reviews:
Other Writing:
- 2025 Lee J. Alston Prize for the Best Article Published in the Previous Year
From Conquest to Rule: War and Bureaucracy in Imperial China.
How do rulers rebuild governance after regime collapse? While bellicist theories emphasize how external war strengthens institutions, many regimes emerge from collapse—through civil war, revolution, or foreign conquest. In such cases, rulers must reconstruct authority from the ground up. I argue that postwar regimes balance coercion and compliance through bureaucratic appointments. Elites offer legitimacy and administrative expertise, while new entrants—military officers and office purchasers—provide coercive capacity, financial resources, and loyalty. I test this argument using early Qing China, a conquest regime that stabilized rule after prolonged warfare. Drawing on an original dataset of nearly 7,000 bureaucratic appointments and 364 conflict events, I show that violence systematically shaped personnel strategies: new entrants were favored in unstable areas, while traditional elites were retained in stable ones. These findings contribute to scholarship on state-building and authoritarian institutions.
From Empire to Nation-State: Aspirational Nation Building in China, with Haohan Chen and Yingtian He.
The rise of nation-states was one of the most transformative developments of the 20th century. What drives nation-building? Existing theories emphasize enmity: external threats provoke fear, humiliation, and hostility, hardening national identity through opposition. We propose an aspirational theory of nation-building, highlighting a parallel mechanism—emulation. Under threat, elites do not only rally against foreign powers; they also look outward with admiration, comparing their nation to more successful states and seeking to close the gap. This forward-looking ambition can transform crisis into reform. We test this theory by analyzing China’s transition from empire to nationstate (1872–1911), using two original datasets: a complete collection of newspaper titles and full-text articles from Shen Bao, the most influential publication of the period. We find that emulation—particularly of culturally proximate powers like Japan—consistently outweighed enmity. War sparked temporary surges in antagonism, but emulation quickly resurged. This article contributes to scholarship on nation-building and state formation.
Meaning as Might: The Ideational Foundations of State Power, with Charles Chang.
States exercise power not only through coercion, bureaucracy, and infrastructure, but also through the construction of meaning. We introduce ideational capacity as a distinct dimension of state power: the ability to craft and project narratives that foster political identification and legitimize authority. Using original global geocoded data and semantic classification with large language models, we develop a cross-national measure of ideational capacity based on state-sponsored museums. We validate this measure by analyzing its spatial distribution, temporal trends, and associations with conventional indicators of state capacity. We also show that ideational capacity is conceptually and empirically distinct from fiscal capacity. Finally, we demonstrate that higher levels of ideational capacity are linked to greater national pride and political trust. By rendering this often-invisible dimension of power empirically tractable, the study broadens prevailing conceptions of state capacity by demonstrating how states deploy symbolic tools to foster unity, legitimacy, and authority.
Narrating the Nation: Intellectuals as Architects of Nation-Building, with Haohan Chen and Yingtian He.
Ruling after Revolution: Security Challenges and Civilian Control over Military in China, 1949-1976. With Junyan Jiang.
Work in Progress:
Class-making as State-making in Great Britain, with Pablo Beramendi and Adriane Fresh.
Meritocracy and State Building in Great Britain, with Didac Queralt.
Rise of China, with Xiaonan Wang.
Book Reviews:
- The Rise and Fall of Imperial China: The Social Origins of State Development by Wang Yuhua. The Development Economies, 61(3): 261–264.
Other Writing:
- Broadstreet Blog, The Myth of Meritocracy: How Exams Helped Build an Empire, March 31 2025.