Meet Juan Qian

Welcome! I am an Earl S. Johnson Postdoctoral Instructor in Political Science at the University of Chicago. I recently completed my Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

I am a comparative political scientist with a regional focus on China and East Asia. My research interests include statebuilding, elite and bureaucratic politics, and political violence in both historical and contemporary contexts. Central to my research is the principal-agent problem in authoritarian bureaucracy – how political leaders incentivize and maintain the compliance of subordinate bureaucrats in executing costly and undesirable tasks for the regime.

My dissertation-based book project, titled Statebuilding by Campaign: Regime Consolidation and Political Control in Modern China, studies the various tactics and mechanisms employed by the Chinese regime under Mao Zedong to motivate and control subordinate bureaucrats during major political campaigns from 1949 to 1976. My research has won several prestigious grants and awards, including NSF-APSA Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant, APSA Hsueh International Fellowship Fund, and China Times Cultural Foundation Young Scholar Award. My recent papers has been published or is forthcoming in peer-reviewed journals including The China Quarterly, Ethnopolitics, and Comparative Politics.

Please find my CV here.