This Introduction to Structures of Governance in Song Dynasty China, 960–1279 CE presents the book’s premise and major themes. It opens with a survey of the two prevailing yet contrasting views of the Song state: (1) that Confucian literati (“scholar-officials”) dominated governance and effected, in accordance with Confucian principles, a “benevolent” administration; (2) that the Song monarchy established and maintained a centralized and predatory political system whose rapacious center extracted then squandered provincial resources. This book synthesizes these two views by expanding the hitherto accepted definition of Song political culture to include all its players, Confucian and non-Confucian, literati and non-literati alike. The resulting model of Song China as a “technocratic–Confucian continuum” combines elements from both these historical perspectives and offers a new model for thinking about governance in Song and during the entire imperial period in China. This model posits Song governance as a continuum of possibilities that ranged between two theoretical poles – a Confucian institutionalism and an imperial technocracy. A brief historiographical prelude summarizes the author’s previous work, The Making of Song Dynasty History: Sources and Narratives, and links the two volumes. This Introduction concludes with a synopsis of each of the work’s eleven chapters.