Homeowners’ associations (HoAs) have increasingly become an integral part of urban life in contemporary China, yet their social and political significance has received limited scholarly attention. Professor Qiao’s book, The Authoritarian Commons, offers fresh insights to reconsider this transformation. Through an interdisciplinary lens, this book examines the development of HoAs in China, focusing on the interplay between the state, law, and homeowners. It demonstrates how neighbourhood self-governance is forged in the tension between institutional constraints and grassroots autonomy.

As a distinguished socio-legal scholar, Prof. Qiao situates his work within extensive property theory and democracy literature. Liberal commons literature in the law and economics tradition usually offers normative accounts on the efficiency and individual autonomy in commons governance (Dagan and Heller, Reference Dagan and Heller2001). Prof. Qiao extends the discussion in an empirical direction by examining the origin of commons. In authoritarian states, the “tragedy of the commons” often manifests as limited self-governance by property owners. This book demonstrates how such tragedy can be overcome through collective action among homeowners. In doing so, this book reconceptualises the commons under the authoritarian context and offers a compelling account of how liberal commons may gradually emerge. Democracy in China is a bigger question this book concerns. This book argues that HoAs possess meaningful democratising potential. Indeed, they have become laboratories of democratic practice, cultivating neighbourhood self-governance and fostering broader civic participation. Moreover, Prof. Qiao innovatively bridges two strands of literature, highlighting the political dimension of property rights. A picture of democracy at the doorstep is rendered in the book. In many respects, this book refreshes our understanding of law, property, and society.

This book offers a comprehensive review of the homeowners’ movement in China. A central inquiry is why HoAs flourish in some cities but remain underdeveloped in others. Prof. Qiao argues that the success of HoAs is rooted in the interactive dynamics among multiple actors. To explain this, Prof. Qiao develops a state–law–homeowners analytical framework. Through a comparative analysis of three megacities in China, this book demonstrates how the distinct roles of these actors, as well as the ways they interact, shape the fortune of HoAs.

The state plays a leading role in the framework. In general, the party-state seeks to harness HoAs to fulfil pragmatic governance needs, while simultaneously constraining their autonomy to maintain social stability. Prof. Qiao further highlights the nuanced variations within this logic. Chapter 3 shows how frontline governments’ evaluations of political risk and their own administrative capacity guide strategic choices. In Beijing, high political sensitivity leads authorities to suppress HoAs’ activities through non-cooperation. In Shenzhen, fragmented administration results in insufficient institutional support for HoAs’ development. By contrast, the successful case of Shanghai demonstrates the importance of both risk tolerance and stronger administrative capacity.

Besides the state, Prof. Qiao also highlights the judiciary’s supplementary role. Restrictive judicial decisions reinforce state control, while supportive judicial decisions can expand HoAs’ autonomy by helping them overcome legal barriers. Chapter 4 illustrates this dynamic by analysing how different courts interpret voting rules. In both Beijing and Shenzhen, courts adopt a rigid interpretation of participation requirements, thereby constraining homeowners’ participation. By contrast, Shanghai courts adopt an innovative interpretation to promote the “relative majority rule,” under which non-voting homeowners are presumed to have consented with the majority. This approach significantly lowers the threshold for participation.

Moving from macro to micro, Prof. Qiao examines the legal consciousness and mobilisation of homeowners. Chapter 5 demonstrates that the vitality of the homeowners’ movement depends on how homeowners themselves perceive and exercise their rights. Homeowners’ actions not only respond to institutional constraints but also gradually reshape them. Homeowners in Beijing prioritise claims for political rights and seek broader political participation. Despite notable achievements, their progressive claims encounter persistent barriers. Homeowners in Shenzhen emphasise property rights and strategically navigate the gaps within the fragmented legal system. In Shanghai, under a supportive institutional environment, homeowners display more legal adherence and make successful claims. These variations in everyday practice contribute to divergent outcomes of HoAs across cities.

Within the analytical framework, this book highlights the tension between the state and HoAs. The state and HoAs are bound in a paradoxical relationship of cooperation and contradiction. The state envisions HoAs as subordinate collaborators in its governance blueprint. Though neighbourhood democracy risks loosening state control, it can also help the state alleviate administrative burdens by fostering self-governance. Chapter 6 provides empirical evidences for this argument. Prof. Qiao’s survey data show that neighbourhoods with HoAs have better governance outcomes and higher levels of trust in government. As their autonomy grows, HoAs gradually shift from passive collaborators to strategic resisters. Chapter 7 illustrates this transformation through case studies from the COVID-19 pandemic period. The state initially relied on the cooperation of HoAs to enforce large-scale lockdowns. Yet, as homeowners became increasingly embedded in neighbourhood governance, their subsequent non-cooperation evolved into a form of collective resistance. Prof. Qiao characterises this dynamic as a “cooperation-to-resistance” strategy, which ultimately contributed to the termination of lockdowns. Chapters 8 and 9 further demonstrate the trajectory from cooperation to resistance. Homeowners employ various channels from collective petitions to legality reviews to challenge the party-state’s intervention in homeowners’ committees. Moreover, HoAs increasingly transcend the boundaries of property, forming cross-community associations and engaging in broader civic issues.

The state–law–homeowners framework provides a powerful lens for understanding the grassroots governance in contemporary China. It productively reminds readers that homeowners’ collective action does not unfold in a vacuum but is conditioned by state power and mediated through legal institutions. While the state–law–homeowners framework is analytically elegant, law appears less prominent in the triangle. In Chapter 4, law is presented largely as a derivative of state power rather than an autonomous institution. Interestingly, across many cases in this book, law exerts influence not through active enforcement, but through absence, inaction, and fragmentation, becoming a tactical instrument for homeowners’ mobilisation. More account of the function of law, how it constrains, enables, or recedes from governance, would deepen the framework’s explanatory power and sharpen our understanding of legal authority in the authoritarian context.

This book primarily illuminates the interplay between different actors, while it may potentially overlook the internal dynamics within HoAs. Condominium is “commons on the inside, property on the outside” (Rose, Reference Rose1998). This book compellingly captures the “outside” story of how HoAs seek property and political rights but pays less attention to the “inside” story. HoAs are often not unified collective actors. Rather, they are internally contested institutions. How do homeowners achieve successful cooperation to manage daily affairs in the neighbourhood? Though Chapter 5 presents several interesting examples, further inquiry would enrich the analysis. For instance, how do homeowners overcome negotiation costs posed by holdouts (Fennell, Reference Fennell2009)? What internal monitoring mechanisms are put in place? How do communities mitigate high discount rates that may discourage long-term investment? These questions are not only theoretical interests for scholars of commons, but also practical challenges in China’s neighbourhood governance. This book, after all, primarily focuses on the origin of authoritarian commons. Prof. Qiao could build on this foundation to further examine how the commons operate in everyday practice.

Homeowners’ associations have become a democracy school in China. Yet a further question cannot be ignored: what kind of democracy? As the book shows, many of the most successful cases are built on charismatic community leaders, who are able to mobilise extensive social networks, financial resources, and legal knowledge. In the Shenzhen tunnel case, for example, homeowners leveraged renowned experts and members of the local people’s congress to secure a favourable outcome. However, how less-resourced communities confront similar challenges remains insufficiently examined. This may reveal two weaknesses of China’s emerging neighbourhood democracy. First, institutional mechanisms for negotiation remain largely informal and exclusionary. Second, democratic practice is concentrated among a limited group of the middle-class, while broader civic engagement has yet to take root. This, of course, represents only an intermediate stage in democratic development. In the long run, as Carole Pateman reminds us, genuine democratisation requires moving beyond charismatic leadership towards a participatory model that cultivates equal capacities across communities (Pateman, Reference Pateman1970). It would be illuminating to see Prof. Qiao further explore this question in future works.

A strength of this book is its remarkably robust empirical research. Drawing on 224 interviews, 841 survey questionnaires, and extensive ethnographic research, Prof. Qiao vividly portrays the everyday experiences of homeowners. Data collected from three cities enables meaningful comparison. While the categorisation of the three cities, supported by case illustrations, might benefit from some clarification. Some cases appear temporally discontinuous. For instance, Chapter 5 uses an example from 2006 to illustrate how homeowners in Beijing frame their rights politically. However the large-scale emergence of HoAs has occurred more recently. Given substantial shifts in political climate, legal frameworks, and civic discourse over time, it remains unclear whether homeowners today still hold the same understandings. Variations in homeowners’ legal consciousness may therefore warrant further examination. Another issue that merits attention is the overlap of identities. Homeowners in the cases of this book often embody multiple roles, ranging from civil rights claimants to legal activists. To what extent their broader civic participation can be attributed to the homeowners’ movement, rather than pre-existing personal dispositions, remains an open question. Nevertheless, these observations do not undermine the persuasiveness of this book’s argument.

In conclusion, The Authoritarian Commons offers an analytically rich and empirically grounded account of how property, state power, and civic mobilisation intersect in contemporary China. The book advances a nuanced vision of how commons can take form under authoritarianism and how neighbourhood governance may generate new spaces for democracy. The questions raised in this book also reach far beyond China’s urban communities. As societies around the world are facing challenges of condominium governance and democratisation, Prof. Qiao’s insights invite scholars to rethink the potential of homeowners. For those who care about property, democracy, and their homes, this book is a great piece.