IZA YUE DING
social scientist of environment, climate, autocracy, democracy

What does the state do when public expectations exceed its governing capacity? The Performative State (2022) shows how the state can shape public perceptions and defuse crises through the theatrical deployment of language, symbols, and gestures of good governance—performative governance.
Iza Ding unpacks the black box of street-level bureaucracy in China through ethnographic participation, in-depth interviews, and public opinion surveys. She demonstrates with vivid detail how China's environmental bureaucrats deal with intense public scrutiny over pollution when they lack the authority to actually improve the physical environment. Bureaucrats assuage public outrage by appearing responsive, benevolent, and humble before citizens. But performative governance is hard work. Environmental bureaucrats paradoxically work themselves to exhaustion even when they cannot effectively implement environmental policies. Instead of achieving "performance legitimacy" by delivering material improvements, the state can also shape public opinion through the theatrical performance of goodwill and sincere effort.
The Performative State also explains when performative governance fails at impressing its audience, and when governance becomes less performative and more substantive. Ding focuses on Chinese evidence but her theory travels: cross-country comparisons with Vietnam and the US show that all states, democratic and authoritarian alike, engage in performative governance.
Book Talks
2023/05: University of Konstanz
2023/02: Brown University
2022/12: Queen's University Belfast
2022/09: Johns Hopkins SAIS
2022/09: Columbia University
2022/05: University of Michigan
2022/04: University of Wisconsin-Madison
2022/04: UCSD
2022/03: Harvard University
2022/02: University of Pennsylvania
Media
Indian School of Public Policy podcast
Scope Conditions podcast