Do Chinese Bureaucrats Reward Contentious Petitioners?

• In Event: Poster Session: Politics of Communist and Former Communist Countries & Critical Political Science
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Politics of Communist and Former Communist Countries

Abstract

Authoritarian government officials responding to citizen petitions and complaints face a problem of perverse incentives. In the short run, they can defuse dissent by directing more benefits to citizens who use contentious language, as these citizens are more likely to protest if their demands are not met. This, however, gives citizens an incentive to write more contentious letters and petitions, while punishing citizens who follow the rules and show deference to the authorities. In this paper, I draw on a corpus of letters and responses collected from China’s Local Leaders Message Board (Lingdao Liuyanban) to study how Chinese officials respond to different types of petitioners in actual practice. Are they more responsive to compliant citizens who follow the ruling party’s rules and norms and emphasize their loyalty to the authorities? Or to transgressive citizens who threaten escalation and use hostile language? And do these patterns differ by region or level of government? Answering these questions will help us understand the incentives facing both ordinary citizens and government officials in the world’s largest autocracy.

Author

• Junius Flagg Brown, University of California, Berkeley