Joseph Torigian is an assistant professor at the School of International Service at American University in Washington, D.C. He has also held numerous other fellowships. His latest book, Prestige, Manipulation and Coercion: Elite Power Struggles in the Soviet Union and China after Stalin and Mao, was published in May by Yale University Press. Torigian spoke to The Wire about common misconceptions surrounding China’s post-Mao era, the failures of institutionalization in China, and how elite power operates in authoritarian regimes.  Joseph Torigian.Illustration by Lauren Crow Q: What is the origin story of your new book? Why did you write it?  A: When I started my PhD program, I thought I was going to write a typical international relations theory dissertation about rising powers. But then I took a class with the late Roderick MacFarquhar, who was a professor in the Government Department at Harvard. What was remarkable about this class was that each week we would read