Institutional Change and Political Control in China

Session Submission Type: Virtual Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Under the Xi Jinping administration, there has been significant evolution in the institutions that the Chinese Communist Party uses to govern and to enforce political control. Much of this institutional change has attracted only limited scholarly attention, likely in part because it has not moved China in a more democratic direction. Nevertheless, it is important to understand the causes, processes, and consequences of change within authoritarian systems. The four papers in this panel address this theme by tracing the evolution of different Chinese institutions and explaining how these shifts have shaped how the Party rules. Carothers and Zhu call attention to the Xi administration’s widening use of inspections in governance and how this change is helping to tighten control over the party-state. Gao discusses the prominent role of Residents’ Committees in the Party’s emergency response system, explaining why this role has changed across different emergencies, including most recently the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan. Li examines the return to power of the “princelings” and the conflict between the Party’s more inclusive institutions, such as the National Party Congress, and the desire of some leaders to allow dynastic succession. Doyon presents a comprehensive overview of changes in the Party’s critical political selection mechanisms, which he finds result from specific coalition-building strategies. Finally, Ji and Ma use biographical data about People's Liberation Army generals to highlight informal lobbying in distributive politics under authoritarianism and the enduring role of revolutionary legacies.

Sub Unit

• Division 13: Politics of Communist and Former Communist Countries

Individual Presentations

• The Widening Use of Inspections in Xi’s China - Christopher Carothers, University of Pennsylvania; Zhu Zhang, Tulane University

• A Comparison of Covid-19 and Other Emergencies in Chinese Governance - Huan Gao

• Return of the Princelings: Analyzing Dynastic Succession in Contemporary China - Tao Li, University of Macau

• Balance of Power and Changes to Political Selection Mechanisms in China - Jerome Doyon, Harvard Kennedy School

• Revolutionaries for Railways: Informal Lobbying and Local Development in China - Chengyuan Ji, Shanghai Jiao Tong University; Xiao Ma, Peking University

Chair

• Victor C. Shih UCSD

Discussants

• Victor C. Shih UCSD

• Daniel Mattingly Yale University