Chan, Kyle. 2024. “Emotional Bureaucrats: The Paradox of Weberian Bureaucracy and Emotions in the Indian Railways.” Current Sociology.

The Indian Railways, the state operator of India’s national railway system, is run by technical experts and governed by formal rules and procedures, embodying many features of Max Weber’s ideal-type of a rational bureaucracy. However, this article shows how these very features contribute to emotions among Indian Railway officials, such as frustration and fear, and ultimately undermine the effectiveness of the organization. (Download PDF)

Chan, Kyle. 2023. “The Organizational Roots of State Capacity: Comparing Railway Bureaucracies in China and India.” Asian Survey 63(1):31-61.

This article compares China’s and India’s state railway bureaucracies, drawing on two years of fieldwork in both countries. I show how China’s bureaucracy is organized around key nodes, such as project corporations, that provide mechanisms for coordination and accountability. In contrast, India’s bureaucracy has more overlapping lines of authority, which makes coordination on railway projects more challenging. (Download PDF)

Chan, Kyle. 2022. “Inside China’s State-Owned Enterprises: Managed Competition through a Multi-Level Structure.” Chinese Journal of Sociology 8(4):453-473.

This article looks at the organizational structure of several of China’s largest state-owned enterprises (SOEs), which dominate strategic sectors of the economy. I argue that these SOEs pursue an approach I call “managed competition” where they try to combine features of market competition with state coordination. (Download PDF)

Dissertation. 2023. Fast Track: State Capacity and Railway Bureaucracies in China and India.

This dissertation draws on two years of fieldwork to show how China’s and India’s railway bureaucracies operate. The first two chapters have been published as the abovementioned peer-reviewed articles. The third chapter examines the role of emotions in the Indian Railways. In addition, I discuss the implications of my findings for improving state-led infrastructure development in China, India, and other parts of the developing world.

(Full version available as an open-access PDF)

I talk about my work in this episode of the Belt and Road podcast.