Politics of Poverty Governance: an Introduction

Poverty alleviation and politics are interrelated in complex ways. Poverty governance is essentially a multi-faceted process of using political power, exercising political authority, mobilizing political resources, running political institutions, and gaining political legitimacy. However, the approach of economics has long dominated current discussions in the literature on poverty reduction, resulting in a relative lack of political science research on poverty reduction interventions. This special issue has gathered together carefully selected articles to examine the politics of poverty governance in non-electoral settings, with a specific area focus on China. Despite focusing on China, this special issue adopts a comparative analytical lens and extends beyond China studies by striving to position China’s poverty governance in relation to general theories of political science. This introductory article seeks to expound the motives highlighted in the special issue, identify the literature gap that the special issue aims to fill, summarize the key findings and contributions, and finally suggest some promising new areas of future research.