ABSTRACT
As social and political conflict intensifies in the Chinese countryside, villagers arc escalating their disputes in growing munbcrs to higher authoritics. 1 Official efforts to control growing tensions in rural China include material concessions such as abolishing agricultural taxes2 as well as procedural reforms such as strengthening and expanding the courts and the official complaints system. 3 This
article compares the popularity and effectiveness of competing disputeresolution strategies from the point of view of the villagers who pursue them. How frequently do aggrieved villagers appeal to local authorities, mobilize the legal system or advance their claims to other authorities in the state bureaucracy? Do they evaluate local solutions more positively than higher-level solutions? Beyond their obvious policy relevance, answers to these questions also contribute to the growing scholarly literature on popular contention in rural China and to our theoretical understanding of access to justice more generally.
