The Military Origins of Civilian Power in China

• In Event: Leader-Elite Power Dynamics in Dictatorships

Abstract

How do party elites get ahead in autocracies? Existing literature typically posits that elite earn promotion through a combination of performance and loyalty. In this paper, we argue that promotion also hinges on threats to the dictator’s leader’s political survival. Specifically, social ties to coercive institutions, especially the military, improve an elite’s ability to mobilize their social network to depose the leader through coup or to refuse support during popular rebellion. This means that coercive social ties are a double-edged sword for a party elite’s prospects for promotion. On the one hand, autocrats are likely to promote elites with dense military ties to stave off the threat they pose. On the other hand, dense military ties become a liability for promotion once elites reach the party’s apex. Prospects for promotion are highest when elites are well-connected to the autocracy’s coercive institutions, but not so well-connected that it rivals those of the autocrat. To test our argument, we introduce an original biographical dataset that catalogues over 190,000 appointments to senior positions within the Chinese military between 1927 and 2014. The results have important implications for our understanding of authoritarian survival and the institutionalization of party rule.

Authors

• Tyler C. Jost, Brown University

• Daniel Mattingly, Yale University