Download or read book Public Interest and State Legitimation written by Wenkai He and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-09-30 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Safeguarding public interest was vital to early modern state legitimacy in Western Europe and East Asia. Wenkai He identifies similar patterns in state-society interactions surrounding public goods provision and explores how conflicts over public interest led to calls for fundamental political change and to modern representative politics.