From Control to Diffusion and Back: The Evolving Logic of Cadre Rotation in China

• In Event: Changing Governance Models in China

Abstract

Authoritarian regimes often rotate officials across geographic regions to lead local administrative units. These geographic rotation policies serve at least three potential developmental logics: they can bolster central control by preventing excessive localism; they can improve national governance by giving rising leaders diverse local experience; and they can improve local governance by serving as a channel for geographic policy diffusion. China’s dynastic rulers used an array of official rotation rules and norms as a mechanism for central control, and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) adopted and then adapted these rotation policies to explicitly serve all three goals: central control, cadre experience/grooming, and the inter-jurisdictional diffusion of policies. Yet the prevalence and rationale behind geographic rotations varies over time and across provinces in China, reflecting evolving governance priorities. In this paper, I develop hypotheses for identifying when cadre rotations serve each of the three logics, based on biographical and local socioeconomic characteristics, and I then test these hypotheses using an original nationwide county-level biographical and economic database. The paper documents changing county-level rotation patterns in the Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping eras and demonstrates the role that leading county cadres play in policy diffusion. Yet, as the paper demonstrates, although many provinces in the Hu Jintao era effectively used county-level cadre rotation to diffuse policies, under Xi Jinping this diffusion effect has disappeared, with rotations increasingly used for purposes of control, either to replace corrupt local leaders or to help achieve centrally mandated policy implementation. The paper adds to the literature on the CCP’s cadre management system, policy diffusion, and China’s “local experimentation model,” with the findings supporting existing evidence that China has curtailed local experimentation and adaptation in the Xi Jinping era.

Author

• David Janoff Bulman, Johns Hopkins University