Ben Read’s research projects to date have focused on grassroots-level organizations in East Asia. One avenue of inquiry concerns extensive networks of associations that incorporate popular participation yet are fostered by governments. Countries from Japan to South Korea to Indonesia feature many thousands (in some cases, hundreds of thousands) of these structures, which operate at the neighborhood or village level and facilitate administration and policing as well as serving social welfare, public health and other functions. Read is preparing a book manuscript comparing state-sponsored neighborhood organizations in authoritarian China and democratic Taiwan, drawing on extensive research that includes participant-observation, interviews, and surveys. He is also editing a book in which country specialists compare eight cases of this type of institution throughout the region. These volumes and related papers argue that such phenomena call for us to reconsider theoretical accounts of the state, associations, and the networks that link them.

A second project concerns groups that are largely or wholly autonomous from direct state influence, in other words, civil society organizations. Prominent theories posit that such groups have a number of salutary, pro-democratic effects, such as inculcating habits of political participation in individuals and demanding accountability from governments. Read’s inquiry has focused on the nascent homeowner movement in China and aims to clarify the conditions under which civil society groups actually manifest these positive effects in observable ways.

Local Organizations and Urban Governance in East and Southeast Asia: Straddling State and Society (edited by Benjamin L. Read with Robert Pekkanen), Routledge 2009

“Mediating the Mediation Debate: Conflict Resolution and the Local State in China,” (with Ethan Michelson) Journal of Conflict Resolution Vol. 52, No. 5 (October 2008), pp. 737-764

“Assessing Variation in Civil Society Organizations: China’s Homeowner Associations in Comparative Perspective,” Comparative Political Studies Vol. 41, Issue 9 (September 2008), pp. 1240-1265

“Political and Social Reform in China: Alive and Walking” (with George J. Gilboy), The Washington Quarterly Vol. 31, No. 3 (Summer 2008), pp. 143-164

“Democratizing the Neighborhood? New Private Housing and Homeowner Self-Organization in Urban China,” The China Journal, Issue 49 (January 2003), pp. 31-59

“Revitalizing the State’s Urban ‘Nerve Tips’,” The China Quarterly No. 163 (September 2000), pp. 806-820

Ph.D., Government, Harvard University, 2003

M.A., Political Science, University of California, Berkeley, 1997

B.A., magna cum laude, Asian Studies, Cornell University, 1993