Research

Research Interests

My research focuses on Chinese domestic politics and administration, addressing complex questions such as the relationship between Party and state, and centre–periphery dynamics. I examine how laws, policies, and directives shape the behaviour of local officials, including how and why they choose to implement policies weakly or strongly. I also explore the role of propaganda and mass education in influencing both officials and the broader population in the process of governance. To investigate these questions, I use an eclectic approach, combining qualitative methods (process tracing, thematic analysis, interviews) with computational social science techniques (statistical analysis, natural language processing, network analysis, and agent-based modelling) for both data collection and analysis. My work engages with a range of theoretical frameworks that help explain the dynamics of the Chinese state and political systems more broadly. Complex systems theory is central to this approach, as it analyses social systems as neither fully predictable nor entirely random, but operating in an intermediate 'complex' space which have their own characteristic dynamics. Such systems exhibit properties such as nonlinear, unpredictable outcomes, emergence, adaptation and feedback loops. Within a social science context, complex systems often occur within networks where highly hierarchical structures interact with individual nodes with some 'degree of freedom'. Complex dynamics are not merely an interesting and abstract theoretical concern, but lead to deep epistemological problems and severe practical challenges to research design. Relying on a single mode of data collection, whether qualitative or quantitative, is therefore likely to introduce bias and result in incomplete or misleading analysis.

PhD thesis

• Stanton, Alasdair T. "The Party leads: Chinese air pollution as complex system.", PDF version in U. of Glasgow repository
• Plain text html version
• Thesis raw files

Publications

• Naylor, Larissa A., Ying Zheng, Neil Munro, Alasdair Stanton, Weikai Wang, Nai R. Chang, David M. Oliver, Jennifer AJ Dungait, and Susan Waldron. "Bringing Social Science Into Critical Zone Science: Exploring Smallholder Farmers' Learning Preferences in Chinese Human‐Modified Critical Zones." Earth's Future 11, no. 9 (2023), Bringing Social Science Into Critical Zone Science
• Naylor, L. A., J. A. J. Dungait, P. D. Hallett, N. Munro, A. Stanton, and T. A. Quine (2023), Earth’s critical zone remains a mystery without its people, Eos, 104, Earth’s critical zone remains a mystery without its people

Datasets

Current Projects

Writing

I currently have a number of writing and research projects underway:-

Research tools

I am also developing research tools and datasets for public use:-