Abstract
Political selection institutions in non-democracies are usually conceptualized as mechanisms to co-opt competent agents for regime survival. Departing from this common emphasis, this article highlights their linkage function between informal politics and policy outcomes. Using multilevel modeling and error correction models, hypotheses on the determinants and implications of formal political selection rules are tested. Drawn from an original dataset of political selection rules in China, this analysis finds that coalitions with particular policy priorities strive to achieve desired policy outcomes through shaping formal political selection institutions. The geographic variation in specific features of the political selection rules is primarily driven by coalitional politics. In addition, the effect of policy performance on local leaders’ promotion prospects is not uniform but conditioned on the political selection rules. Under such incentive arrangements, local leaders are found to expand government spending in the policy area prioritized in formal political selection rules. These findings advance our understanding of the endogenous political nature of political selection rules and the relations between informal institutions and policy performance.
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For example, Landry et al. (2018) show that whereas loyalty is paramount for those within the selectorate, local politicians distant from the core of power are promoted on the basis of competence in economic development. Jia et al. (2015) find a complementary role of personal connections and work performance, and top leaders pick the most talented subordinates in the pool of loyal officials. See Wang (2021) for a review on the post-Mao cadre management regime in China.
Some recent research highlighted that the performance itself is partly endogenous to political connections (see Jiang 2018).
For example, factions are found to affect promotion outcomes (e.g.: Shih et al. 2012; Jia et al. 2015), anticorruption (Zhu and Zhang 2017), bank lending (Shih 2004), inflationary cycles (Shih 2008a), policy process (Chung 2000), and ideological campaigns (Shih 2008b). Fiscal transfer also serves as a mediating factor between performance and factionalism (see Wong 2022).
Economic targets include those related to industry, investment, and fiscal revenue (see the category of “economic development” in Table 1 in Online Appendices). Those regarding education, public health, environment, and culture are social targets (see the categories of “social development”, “sustainable development”, “people’s welfare”, and “cultural construction” in the appendix table). Political targets contain those related to administrative and judicial system, and party affairs (see “political construction” and “party building” categories in the appendix table).
See Ning and Zuo (2022).
In the sample, points assigned to economic target points vary from 27 to 64 out of 100, whereas those of social welfare targets vary from 24 to 73.
In the sample, two provinces, Anhui (2011–2015) and Guangdong (2008), have adopted the classified evaluation (fenlei kaohe) approach and TRS point schemes vary across different categories of prefectures within each province to accommodate local needs. For the four types of cities in Guangdong, the economic target points and social target points are 0.30 and 0.70, 0.31 and 0.69, 0.33 and 0.67, and 0.27 and 0.73, respectively, where social target points far exceed economic ones for all types of cities. For the four types of cities in Anhui, for example in 2011, the economic target points and social target points are 0.60 and 0.40, 0.58 and 0.42, 0.58 and 0.42, and 0.49 and 0.51, respectively. Only the city in the fourth category (i.e., Huangshan) differs from the rest of cities in the TRS point scheme pattern due to the priority of Huangshan in developing tourism and therefore having more points assigned to the “sustainable development” category.
For more information on Xitong, please see Lieberthal (2003).
http://103.247.176.86/eventgis/index.html, accessed in January 2017.There is no consistent public record on social unrest in China.
Fisher type xtunitroot test indicates that the growth and the level of government revenue are non-stationary, thus they are not included in the model.
http://www.clb.org.hk, accessed in December 2017.
http://ngdc.noaa.gov/eog/dmsp/downloadV4composites.html, accessed in December 2017.
This generates a mayor sample of 184 observations (mayor-tenure) from 116 prefectures in 12 provinces, and a party secretary sample of 161 observations (party secretary-tenure) from 114 prefectures in 14 provinces. Nine cases where leaders were removed from office due to corruption are treated as “abnormal” causes of leadership turnover and excluded from analysis.
Using “leader-year” is problematic, because it assumes that work performance before year T has no effect on the career move that occurred in year T. However, interviews show that the provincial party organization department takes into account the overall performance during the city leader’s tenure and compares to that of the rest of cities in the same province, rather than the most recent year’s performance, when making personnel decisions (Interview JX19111505, BJ10311201).
Using immediate political outcome or political outcomes 2 years after the completion of tenure don’t change the substantive story in the analysis.
These three environmental measures are the comprehensive utilization ratio of industrial solid wastes, centralized treatment ratio of wastewater, and decontamination rate of domestic waste.
Another common class of models is the autoregressive distributed lag (ADL) model. Choosing to estimate the ADL or ECM is largely a matter of “ease of interpretation” (De Boef and Keele 2008, 190).
Spending on environmental protection is not included due to data inconsistency.
Unfortunately, systematic and consistent city-level data on the proportion of age groups below 18 or the elderly population is not available in statistical yearbooks.
A decrease in social spending may be caused by government incentive to attract investment and cut down labor cost, whereas urbanization can lead to the increase in social spending. Urbanization, economic openness, and marketization are measured by the ratios of urban residents to total population, FDI to GDP, and non-SOE employees to labor pool, respectively.
The statistically significant and negative coefficients of the lagged level of TRS point differences in models 2, 4 and 6 in Table 4 suggest that adhering to the pro-welfare TRS points might lead to declining social spending ratio in the long run. One possible explanation is that the lagged level of TRS point differences is associated with more fiscal resources allocated to the social welfare areas in the previous year (see correlational table, Table B.3 in Online appendix), therefore without further expanding the TRS point difference and signaling the continuation of increasing emphasis on social welfare, the ratio of social spending would regress. Yet, since the statistical significance of the coefficient is not robust in at least two models, therefore, the negative long-term effect is not supported with strong evidence.
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Acknowledgements
The author is grateful to Melanie Manion, Pierre Landry, James Kung, Kellee Tsai, Edward Friedman, Xiaobo Lü, Ling Chen, Jean Hong, Xian Huang, and participants in the Chinese Political Workshop at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Peking University, and 2017 APSA conference for helpful comments. Financial support from Fudan University, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and University of Wisconsin-Madison is gratefully acknowledged. All errors remain my own.
Funding
Sponsored by MOE (Ministry of Education in China) Project of Humanities and Social Sciences (Project No. 17YJCZH278).
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Zuo, C. Political Selection Institutions and Policy Performance: Evidence from China. Chin. Polit. Sci. Rev. 9, 129–151 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41111-022-00225-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41111-022-00225-5