Chinese Politics: the Relationships among Capitalism, Law and Democracy

Mary Gallagher is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan, where she is also the Director of the Center for Chinese Studies, and a faculty associate at the Center for Comparative Political Studies at the Institute for Social Research. The underlying question that drives her research in all of these areas is whether the development of markets is linked to the sequential development of democratic politics and legal rationality. Put simply, she is interested in the relationships between capitalism, law and democracy. Her empirical research in China is used to explore these larger theoretical questions.