Abstract:  As China enters a transitional stage in institution building, negotiations and bargaining that occur in institution building often erupt into public incidents. Reviewing the current theoretical framework of studies on these public incidents would enable us to define the position and space for such discussions in the field of China’s political studies. A shift from sociology to politics is observable in the research approach in this field in both China and the West, showing that the study of public incidents has been subsumed again into the concept of the state. However, this return to the state is differently construed in China and in the West.

Key words:  state theory, political changes, public incidents, social movement, state building