Yao Li

Yao Li completed her PhD in sociology at Johns Hopkins University in February 2015. She will join the Center for East Asian Studies at University of Kansas as a lecturer in fall 2015. Yao has been interested in social unrest since 2006 when her mother participated in a protest against hospital privatization in China. She has published “Fragmented Authoritarianism and Protest Channels” in the Journal of Current Chinese Affairs (2013). Several other journal articles are under review or in preparation. A conference paper based on a chapter of her dissertation has won an award from the North American Chinese Sociologists Association in 2014. Dr. Li has been invited to give talks and presentations on her research at numerous professional conferences and institutions, including Stanford University, University of Pennsylvania, and Williams College. Her next book project focuses on the stunning rise of environmental activism in contemporary China.

Current Work:

Dr. Li is working on a book project, which examines how rising protests affect regime stability in China. Social scientists have tended to see that growing unrest in authoritarian states as signals of regime decline. However, the Chinese regime remains resilient despite mounting protests. To solve the puzzle, Dr. Li emphasizes the importance to distinguish between different types of protests, especially to explore why some protests enhance regime resilience while others undermine it. Drawing on extensive event data and in-depth case studies, her research highlights the role of informal norms, or the unwritten rules, in promoting conflict resolution through dialogue and building regime legitimacy and resilience. Using China as an example, this research develops an original theoretical framework that can be used as a template for investigating the nature and monitoring of political stability in other authoritarian regimes.

Research Area(s):

• Development Studies
• Sociology