Mini-Conference on Asian Political History: Asia’s Institutions of Lasting Rule: Bureaucracy, Education, and Empire

Session Submission Type: Created Panel

Part of Mini-Conference

• Mini-Conference on Asian Political History

Session Description

This panel studies the evolution of historical institutions and their impacts in Asia. How have bureaucracy and education systems evolved in Asia? Using a novel dataset constructed with 5,000 tomb epitaphs from the late-6th to early 10th centuries, and a mixed-methods design, Wang and Yang document that the origins of the Imperial Examination System in China were due to various contingent factors. Kuipers argues that patterns of aristocratic bureaucratic recruitment amounted to ethnic self-rule, supported by evidence from a newly-collected panel dataset on the indigenous civil service (pangreh pradja) in the Dutch East Indies between 1882-1942. Zaw aims to understand state involvement in education expansion, and offer new insights based on an original panel data covering 33 British Burma districts over two decades (1901-20). Nong uses a novel dataset covering 357 monarchs in 17 states in ancient China during the Spring-Autumn and Warring States to study how informal institutions promote autocratic survival.

Sub Unit

• Division 7: Politics and History

Individual Presentations

• The Origins and Consequences of China's Imperial Examination System - Erik H Wang, New York University; Clair Yang, University of Washington

• Nations That Never Were: A Comparative Study of the Dutch East Indies and French Indochina - Nicholas Kuipers, Princeton University

• The Societal Origins of State Education: Evidence from British Burma - Htet Thiha Zaw, University of British Columbia

• Informal Succession Institutions and Autocratic Survival: Evidence from Ancient China - Xin Nong, Hitotsubashi University

Chair

• Ji Yeon (Jean) Hong University of Michigan

Discussants

• Pierre F. Landry Chinese University of Hong Kong

• Cheng Cheng New York University