The Story of Scandinavia by Stein Ringen

If current trends of repression intensify, less pessimistic analysts will need to recognise that Ringen’s analysis may have been prescient.’ -Daniel A. Professor Ringen’s interpretation is different than my own, but China watchers need to engage with his thought-provoking and carefully argued assessment. ‘China is a complex country, and there is a range of reasonable interpretations of its political system. Ideal as a textbook.’ -Perry Link, University of California, Riverside

The author’s encyclopedic understanding of his topic is based on a mastery of relevant scholarship and is delivered in clear, no-nonsense prose that bows to no one. Perfect as a dictatorship, but brutal, destructive, and wasteful. ‘Stein Ringen shows how the Chinese state has used both fear and material inducements to build a “controlocracy” of a size and complexity unprecedented in world history. In a timely and engagingly written book, Stein Ringen systematically demolishes all the components of this claim.’ -Frank Dikötter, University of Hong Kong ‘There is no lack of scholars and pundits abroad who tell us that dictatorship in China is for the greater good. Far and away the best introduction to how the CCP dictatorship works.’ -Edward Friedman, University of Wisconsin-Madison Choose from Same Day Delivery, Drive Up or Order Pickup. In a lively and persuasive manner, the author vividly analyses key data in a comparative and theoretical manner. Read reviews and buy The Story of Scandinavia - by Stein Ringen (Hardcover) at Target. Scandinavian history has been one of dramatic discontinuities of collapse and restarts, from the Viking Age to the Age of Perpetual War. ‘This is an excellent book which asks important questions about China’s future. In SCANDINAVIA, academic and international scholar Stein Ringen chronicles more than 1,200 years of drama, economic rise and fall, crises, kings and queens, war, peace, language and culture. ‘A new interpretation of the Chinese party-state-shows the advantage that derives from a comparative theorist looking at the Chinese system.’ -Tony Saich, Harvard University

The Story of Scandinavia by Stein Ringen