Poster #82 - Does Political Rotation Improve Arable Land Protection? Evidence from China

• In Event: Saturday Poster Luncheon

Abstract

As a critical foundation for national food security and long-term agricultural sustainability, arable land protection remains a persistent challenge in China (Liu et al. 2017). Local governments play a central role in land conversion decisions and face competing pressures between economic growth objectives and land preservation. Given that land conversion is closely tied to fiscal revenues, local officials have strong incentives to prioritize development-oriented conversion decisions. At the same time, higher-level authorities face limited ability to fully observe or verify the motivations and processes underlying local land-use decisions. From a principal–agent theory perspective (Garen 1994; Prendergast 1999; Ross 1973), this combination of strong local incentives and imperfect oversight creates conditions for information asymmetry, incentive misalignment, and opportunistic behavior in land conversion.

While existing research has extensively examined how administrative reforms and fiscal transparency address such agency problems (e.g., Chen and Neshkova 2020; Zhuge et al. 2026), less attention has been paid to personnel-based governance strategies as a distinct mechanism for mitigating such problems. At the same time, research on cadre rotation suggests that personnel mobility is often used to limit rent-seeking and constrain the formation of patron–client networks (Cyan and Pasha 2017; Hassan 2017). Against this backdrop, this paper examines whether personnel mobility of political leaders improves arable land protection.

From the perspective of principal–agent theory, personnel mobility of political leaders can be understood as a personnel-based governance mechanism that deters rent-seeking behaviors on land conversion. First, personnel mobility reduces officials’ embeddedness in local political and economic networks, thereby weakening stable ties with land-related interest groups and limiting opportunities for collusive behavior in land conversion decisions. Second, personnel mobility alters incentive structures by shifting officials’ career advancement prospects away from local actors toward higher-level evaluation systems, thereby strengthening alignment with centrally mandated arable land protection objectives. Third, personnel mobility reduces informational asymmetries associated with prolonged tenure and enhances higher-level authorities’ capacity to monitor local land-use decisions. Through these channels, personnel mobility is expected to constrain discretionary land conversion and improve compliance with arable land protection policies.

Utilizing unique disaggregated data on city leaders’ curriculum vitae and satellite-based land use information in China for nearly two decades, our difference-in-differences (DID) estimators show that, rotated city leaders significantly contribute to arable land protection, as proxied by the increase in the share of arable land. We further show that such promotion effect is primarily driven by: (1) city leaders who are rotated to non-hometown cities, as they are less likely to have stable ties with local elites; (2) and leaders who are rotated to cities within the same province, as they are more familiar with the local contexts.

This study contributes to the literature in two ways. First, it extends principal–agent theory by showing that personnel mobility of political leaders is an important but understudied governance mechanism for mitigating agency problems beyond traditional institutional and information-based reforms. Second, it provides a unified mechanism-based account of how personnel mobility improves policy compliance through reducing local embeddedness, reshaping career incentives, and strengthening monitoring capacity.

Author

• Ziliang Liu, Fudan University
  Presenting Author