Synopsis Both India and China have experienced economic changes and growing social consciousness which have generated new challenges for local institutions.  This volume closely studies the resultant grass-roots political experiences in these countries from an interdisciplinary perspective.  It examines the process of democratization and highlights the growing demands for participation and the complex power structures interjecting them.  The contributors to this volume discuss relating to institutional structures and the dynamic of local governance in a change social-economic environment that panchayati raj in India and village committee system in China represent.  In addition to the political economy of rural areas, they also focus on the role of gender, caste, class, ethnicity and religion in local political process.  In doing so, the volume: outlines how institutional innovation has evolved in both countries; highlights the impact of the 73rd Amendment to the Constitution (in India) and the Organic Law (in China) in facilitating political participation; and investigates how far the new democratic processes have reduced ethnic subordination, caste hierarchy and gender injustice at the village level.  Comprising individual case studies as well as comparative perspective, this pioneering volume on local democracy raises new issues of institution-building and socio-economic change vis-à-vis the right to participate.  It will be of particular interest to political scientists, sociologists and social activists.