This thoroughly researched monograph addresses a crucial puzzle for observers of Chinese rural politics: if the local administration at the county, township and village levels is as bad as its reputation (i.e. corrupt, rent-seeking, incompetent, etc.), how come the state still, to a considerable degree, manages to get things done on the ground? To answer this question Ahlers has analysed how the broad policy framework known as Building a New Socialist Countryside (BNSC) has been implemented in four counties in the provinces of Shaanxi, Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Fujian.

In part one, Ahlers first outlines the content of the BNSC and explains how the flexibility of this framework made it possible for local cadres to find locally suitable solutions to rural development problems. At the same time, the discursive strategy of the central government changed from using local cadres as scapegoats for everything that went wrong in the countryside to depicting them as active and positive “constructors” of rural modernity. This contributed to giving the cadres a stronger sense of mission than they had before.

Ahlers also shows that when designing their individual BNSC plans, the four counties covered by her survey made full use of the considerable room for manoeuvre left by the vagueness of central policy guidelines. The county in Shaanxi, which was the poorest in the sample, stuck closely to orthodox ideas outlined by the province, while political leaders in the other three counties, to varying degrees, developed their own particular approaches and strategies, which they used for branding the locality under their administration, thereby also gaining personal fame, which could promote their careers.

Part two focuses on the implementation process. Ahlers first explains the organizational framework for implementing BNSC with a focus on the county level. Funding the provision of public goods has been a formidable problem for local rural governments, but Ahlers shows that transfer payments and earmarked funds from the central government actually reached the four counties by complicated channels and enabled them to finance relevant projects in the villages. The author does not deny that parts of the funding may have disappeared into the officials' own pockets, but she makes the sensible point that it is possible to be (moderately) corrupt and still be able to implement policies from above effectively.

From the county level, Ahlers then moves further down the organizational hierarchy to the townships and administrative villages. Both these levels depend heavily on the goodwill of the county, which stands out as the most powerful level of government. The villagers' own participation in deciding which projects to implement, and how, was generally very limited. However, the opinion of local people, and particularly of local elites, had to be taken into account to a certain degree. Open resistance from the villagers would reflect badly on local leaders, particularly if complaints and protests were taken to the higher levels, and projects would be difficult to implement if they were not supported by the population. Therefore some consultations would normally take place to secure active or at least passive consent.

Pilot projects, demonstration sites and model villages represent one traditional but still very important way of implementing BNSC, and Ahlers shows how there is considerable room for local improvisation also in this field. The selection of models, how they are developed and how they are emulated by others is an interesting topic that has received limited attention in the literature on policy implementation, although such models attract a considerable part of the funding set aside for rural development. Instead of simply dismissing these models as unrepresentative showcases Ahlers shows how they should be taken seriously as indications of “the rationale and capacities of county- and township-level governments as well as the effects of their agency” (p. 170).

The final chapter of part two looks at the evaluation system for local cadres, with all its performance goals, score cards and inspections from the higher levels. Such evaluations have been known to be saturated with corruption and deceit, but also in this field the author finds much local variation and a trend towards more emphasis on measuring “tangible achievements in implementing developmental policies” (p. 200).

Part three, the conclusion, provides a succinct summary and further explains the book's generally optimistic view on local governments' strategic agency, which “… supported by the current policy approach and framed by institutional constraints, played out in favor of relatively effective implementation of meaningful local BNSC in the four cases that were examined” (p. 210). The incentives were in place for cadres to implement central policies effectively. An argument like this will always leave the author open for criticism: are the four counties representative or just official showcases for “good governance”? Would the conclusion be the same if there had been more ordinary villagers among the author's informants? How reliable is the information given to a foreign researcher about, say, financial flows? Ahlers is well aware of these issues and she is consistently very careful about showing us the limitations of her data and conclusions. The result is a balanced and reflective account of the mechanisms that make rural policy implementation work – when it works.

The book is based on the author's PhD dissertation. It is dense with details about administrative structures and procedures and is clearly written for a specialist audience rather than for undergraduates. However, with its clear argument and careful documentation it deserves to be read by anyone interested in the mechanisms that decide how central Chinese policies are implemented on the ground.