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Extralegal Governance

Extralegal Governance

Extralegal Governance

The Social Order of Illegal Markets in China
Peng Wang, University of Hong Kong
Wanlin Lin, Sun Yat-sen University
September 2025
Not yet published - available from September 2025
Hardback
9781009622141

    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.

    • Offers fresh insights and first-hand data on four different types of illegal markets in China
    • Develops a socio-economic approach for analyzing illegal markets, risks, and extralegal governance institutions within these markets
    • Provide an inter-disciplinary perspective to understand uncertainties and extralegal governance institutions that facilitate cooperation and sustain illegal markets

    Product details

    September 2025
    Hardback
    9781009622141
    200 pages
    229 × 152 mm
    Not yet published - available from September 2025

    Table of Contents

    • List of figures
    • List of tables
    • Acknowledgements
    • 1. Introduction
    • 2. Developing a socio-economic approach for analyzing the social order of illegal markets
    • 3. Unmasking China's illegal markets: research design and fieldwork
    • 4. Unlicensed street vending
    • 5. small-property-right housing market
    • 6. Corrupt transactions
    • 7. The illegal online lending market
    • 8. Conclusion
    • Bibliography.
      Authors
    • Peng Wang , University of Hong Kong

      Peng Wang is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology, the University of Hong Kong. He is the author of The Chinese Mafia: Organized Crime, Corruption and Extralegal Protection (2017). His research interests include organized crime, illegal markets, corruption, economic sociology, bureaucracy, and governance.

    • Wanlin Lin , Sun Yat-sen University

      Wanlin Lin is Associate Professor at the School of Law, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China. Her current research applies institutional economics, law and economics, and game theory to study informal property rights, illegal markets, knowledge governance in China, and interactions between formal and informal institutions.