Factions in Action: Party Networks and Political Alignment in China's Reform Era

• In Event: 1104 - Old Problems and New Methods: The Resurgence of Political Parties in Political Sociology

Abstract

Political alignment is traditionally believed to be structured by clear-cut materials or ideological cleavages, but recent research has found that the fixed (and often binary) factionalism becomes crosscutting because of multiplex, preexisting elite ties. Yet factional alignment is even more flexible and fluid in processes of elite interactions: political figures often hold mutable positions, maintain unclear boundaries, and use pragmatic strategies so as to switch sides in the power game. Political polarization, if occurring, is hence the result of relational polarization in elite interactions. By employing longitudinal network analysis to examine elite communications in China in 1977-1992, this project challenges the long-held belief that the leaders of the Communist Party divided into two rival groups—the Reformers and the Conservatives—with nearly fixed ideological orientations and membership. The factional ambiguity and oscillation, however, were not caused by the “robust-action” style of leadership of Deng Xiaoping who is said to sit behind and above the party network, balance antagonistic factions, and swing between opposite policy preferences. Instead, elite coalitions at the top of the power structure constantly drift in their unfolding interactions over different issues, periodically producing and punctuated by major reshuffles.

Authors

• Yang Zhang, American University

• Feng Shi, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill