When East Ping Village in rural China rebuilt its middle school, none of the funds for the public project passed through government officials’ hands; an elected citizens’ committee supervised and managed the construction instead. Why? “Local officials could have control over everything if they wanted to,” says Lily Tsai, an associate professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But Tsai showed that in China local officials sometimes permit, and even…

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Read more stories by Jessica Ruvinsky.