Governing homeowner associations in China’s gated communities: the extension of state infrastructural power and its uneven reach

Abstract

Homeowner associations (HOAs), the emergent neighborhood-based organizations, spawn new modes of neighborhood governance in post-reform China, meanwhile are profoundly influenced by state power. Aiming to unpack the complexity and hybridity of neighborhood governance, this research presents a detailed examination of how the local state exerts institutionalized control over HOAs through three critical mechanisms of infrastructural power: (1) the establishment of regulatory institutions to formalize the state influence on HOAs; (2) the enforcement of registration projects to make HOAs legible and governable; (3) the cultivation of clientelist ties with participants of HOAs. The uneven state reach owing to fragmentally organized local authorities is purposively designed to facilitate political control on urban neighborhoods. This study enriches Mann’s conceptual framework of infrastructural power through the scrutiny of fragmented state apparatus, and renews our understanding of the dynamic state–society interactions at the conjuncture of economic liberation and political domination in post-reform China.