Meritocracy or Patronage? Bringing the Leninist-party Back In

• In Event: Political Recruitment and State Capacity in China

Abstract

Promotion is a classical topic in the study of Chinese politics. Existing literature argues back and forth between two models: the factionalism model and the meritocracy model. Recent studies tend to reconcile these two models by examining different levels of governments. This paper argues that neither model pays enough attention to the organization of the Chinese Communist Party itself. Such debates have neglected arguably the most important feature of the CCP, namely its Leninist nature. By rethinking and reexamining the Leninist nature of the organization (i.e., the CCP), this paper argues that there can be a third model of promotion, which we call the organizationalism model. A unique feature of such a model is that the Leninist organization itself has different priorities across different time periods and promotion of cadres is also based on the priorities of the organization. Departments and agencies falling in Party’s priorities are more likely to have more cadres promoted than departments falling off the Party’s priorities. Empirical tests are based on a newly constructed database, relying on Organizational History books, which includes all cadres of leading positions within the Party system from the early 1920s to the late 1990s in Shanxi.

Authors

• Hao Chen, University of Southern California

• Saul Kriger Wilson, Brown University