Building Bureaucratic Capacity: Evidence from China

• In Event: Elites, Social Class, and State Building

Abstract

Autocrats are usually perceived to have little incentive to invest in state capacity. In this article, I argue that autocrats have power-consolidating incentive to invest in state capacity, in particular bureaucratic capacity. Investment in bureaucratic capacity means increasing the level and size of education and professionalization of governed officials. For autocrats, introducing impersonal, merit-based bureaucratic recruitment decreases the discretionary power of potential challengers at both local and central levels. I test this argument by using a novel, disaggregated dataset on government bureaucracies in China.

My argument centers around two political actors, an incumbent autocrat and his challengers in ruling coalition. I assume the pre-existing situation is one in which the opponents have a certain level of control over bureaucratic appointments. When an incumbent autocrat has not consolidated power, his priority is to control power-deploying agencies. Bureaucracy is a critical power-deploying agency as bureaucrats are the on-the-ground implementer of policies and at the forefront of sustaining political stability. Competition over bureaucratic power, especially personnel and revenue-relevant bureaucratic positions, is the key political struggle between the incumbent and his opponents. At local level, introducing impersonal, merit-based bureaucratic recruitment reduces the power of his opponents, as objective recruitment procedures undermine the discretionary power of officials. Appointment of rank-and-file bureaucrats is thus centralized. Doing so also helps consolidate power at top level, as the incumbent can replace clients of his opponents with younger and more educated officials. These officials are at the early stage of their political career without entrenched power bases. From their perspective, cooperation with the incumbent sends off a signal of loyalty. It also increases local bureaucratic performance, which in turn increases their chances of promotion.

I test it by using disaggregated data on bureaucracies in China after Cultural Revolution. China is a suitable case as it was a weak state in the late 1970s and early 1980s where state apparatus rendered almost non-existent due to Mao’s policies. However, starting from 1980s, China was able to build bureaucratic capacity by phasing out revolutionaries at the top level and implementing civil service exam at local level. In a well-known example, Deng Xiaoping promoted his proteges to advance political reforms.

My key outcome variable is bureaucratic capacity, measured by the size and level of education and professionalization of bureaucracies. A key aspect of state building in the United States during the Progressive Era was the replacement of incompetent political patronage appointees with university-trained agronomists, engineers, and economists. For evaluating a country like China, it is very important to generate disaggregated data, as there is a widely held perception that the quality of governance varies enormously across functions, levels of government, and regions. Data on local bureaucracies in China can be found in Fifty Years of Statistics on Chinese Cadres, published by Chinese Communist Party Organization Department. The data contains information on the size, educational level, age of bureaucracies in different provinces and different functional bureaus from 1949 to 1998. For independent variables, I plan to construct a dataset of provincial leaders in China that entails information on their relationships to the incumbent as well as their age and education. I plan to compile this dataset from a variety of sources including Internet and publications by the CCP.

In conclusion, this project argues that for autocrats, meritocracy in government is a means toward the goal of power control. With empirical focus on the single case of China, this proposal and the subsequent paper do not amount to a general account for bureaucratic capacity in autocracies. However, the argument sheds new lights on how autocrats have the incentive and strategize to push for higher bureaucratic capacity. Future work can look at why some bureaucratic reforms in autocracies succeeded, as in China, South Korea, Singapore, but failed in others such as Brazil and Argentina.

Author

• Peng Peng, Duke University