Extralegal Governance

Drawing on firsthand data, Extralegal Governance develops a socio-economic approach to examine the social order of illegal markets in China.

Extralegal Governance provides the first comprehensive account of China's illegal markets. It deepens the understanding of the nature of illegal markets and the exchange relationships within them. Based on in-depth fieldwork, it explores how market participants foster cooperation and mitigate risks in various illegal markets.Drawing on insights from sociology and new institutional economics, Extralegal Governance provides the first comprehensive account of China's illegal markets by applying a socio-economic approach. It considers social legitimacy and state repression in examining the nature of illegal markets. It examines how power dynamics and varying levels of punishment shape exchange relationships between buyers and sellers. It identifies context-specific risks and explains how private individuals and organizations address these risks by developing extralegal governance institutions to facilitate social cooperation across various illegal markets. Adopting a multiple-case study design to sample China's illegal markets, this book utilizes four cases - street vending, small-property-rights housing, corrupt exchanges, and online loan sharks - to examine how market participants foster cooperation and social order in illegal markets.