Toward a “Structure-Agency” Framework for Analyzing Elite Conflict: Case of the Great Leap Forward

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  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Comparative-Historical Roundtable 8

Abstract

Scholars of elite conflict, particularly within comparative political economy who focus on developmental states and social coalitions, often adopt a Weberian, meso-level perspective. This approach typically concentrates on specific intermediate groups, examining how supposedly depoliticized and interest-free bureaucrats compete over particular policies based on their distinct ideologies, interests, resources, and power. I argue that this meso-level perspective neglects the inherently political nature of elite conflict, especially regarding both the politicized structural origins of elite interests and the agency factors, such as pivotal political events, that actively transform interest cleavage into outright conflict.
Using the Great Leap Forward (GLF)—the 20th century’s largest economic experiment—as a key historical case, I propose a new structure–agency framework for analyzing elite conflict: Why did Mao’s radicalization fail in 1955 but succeed in 1958, despite identical structural conditions? I contend that elite interest cleavages are fundamentally rooted in the politicized structural origins of state power—for example, its historical phase and its position in the global capitalism structure—while their actualization as a conflict depends on the social conjuncture and how key actors imagine and interpret the prevailing situation (agency/contingency). My comparative historical analysis demonstrates that two critical temporalities—the structural tension between the post-revolutionary state’s strong Party organizational capacity and weak infrastructural state capacity, coupled with the catch-up pressure facing a late-developer state—fueled the underlying policy conflict between Maoist radicalism and technocratic moderation. The dramatic shift of the social conjuncture between 1955 and 1958 altered actors’ interpretations and imaginations about the situation, ultimately triggering the elite conflict and the outbreak of the GLF. By conceptualizing the core theoretical concepts of structural origins and social conjuncture, this work makes a contribution to the fields of elite conflict theory, comparative historical sociology, and 20th-century Chinese studies.

Author

• Ruizhe Zhang, Peking University