Ambiguous Policy, State Capacity and Local Collusion: Evidence from China

• In Event: Authoritarianism in the Past & Present

Abstract

What impact do ambiguous policies have on the behavior of grassroots governments? Scholars believe that because of the lacking of power supervision, the result of authoritarian regimes’ developmental policies mainly feeds the elites in their closed circles if without apparent pressure from the public. However, the simultaneity of economic success and a relatively high degree of citizen support in Eastern China has posed a challenging argument. In this paper, we use geographic discontinuity regression design to examine the long-term effects of poverty alleviation policies on grassroots governance by comparing two bordering parts within Zhejiang province where one part has taken the ambiguous approach while the other continues to take the targeted policy. We find that government-public collusion has taken place significantly in the treatment region by observing the increasing variety of public goods and decreasing petitioning cases. Therefore, we propose that the ambiguity of policy checks from the upper class would stimulate the local government turns more to the public who can provide efficient resources for performance assessment in the context of Xi’s multi-objective development, resulting that the local populace would be included into the interest share circle to some extent. Furthermore, we also show that state infrastructural capacity, which is formed by the expansion of schools, hospitals, and parks, could moderate the effect on collusion.

Authors

• Li Li, Central China Normal University

• Shengyu He, Zhejiang University