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Co-optation & Clientelism: Nested Distributive Politics in China’s Single-Party Dictatorship

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Abstract

What explains the persistent growth of public employment in reform-era China despite repeated and forceful downsizing campaigns? Why do some provinces retain more public employees and experience higher rates of bureaucratic expansion than others? Among electoral regimes, the creation and distribution of public jobs is typically attributed to the politics of vote buying and multi-party competition. Electoral factors, however, cannot explain the patterns observed in China’s single-party dictatorship. This study highlights two nested factors that influence public employment in China: party co-optation and personal clientelism. As a collective body, the ruling party seeks to co-opt restive ethnic minorities by expanding cadre recruitment in hinterland provinces. Within the party, individual elites seek to expand their own networks of power by appointing clients to office. The central government’s professed objective of streamlining bureaucracy is in conflict with the party’s co-optation goal and individual elites’ clientelist interest. As a result, the size of public employment has inflated during the reform period despite top-down mandates to downsize bureaucracy.

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Notes

  1. In a separate article, I survey the available sources of data on public employment and explain why the source used here is the most comprehensive and reliable. See Ang 2012.

  2. For instance, in standard public administrations, the official number of public employees should equate the actual size of employment. In China, however, there is a gap between state-approved and actual number of public positions. Additionally, the concept and existence of “civil servants” is relatively new in China, officially introduced after the passage of the Civil Service Law in 2006. The vast majority of China’s public administrative employees belong to an ambiguous, non-civil service category, which I term extra-bureaucracies in this article. See Ang (2012) for an elaboration of these institutional differences.

  3. For example, Gandhi defines the dictators in communist dictatorships as the effective heads of government, specifically, “general secretaries of the communist party” (2008, p. 18). However, she acknowledges that this is not a satisfactory definition because the heads of governments in dictatorships have multiple titles and may not be effectively in charge even if they hold formal office.

  4. Political leaders also cultivate clients with businesses (Ong 2012; Wang 2013; Wank 1996). But, as my focus is on public employment, I will set aside state-business clientelist ties in this article.

  5. The volume is titled Local Public Financial Statistics.

  6. China implements a hierarchy-wide bianzhi system that sets an official guideline for the number of public employees in each office. In practice, the bianzhi is only a guideline; actual hiring typically exceeds bianzhi, especially if an office can generate extra funds (Ang 2012).

  7. To give an example, the construction bureau is a state office. In a city of Jiangsu, the construction bureau supervised 18 subsidiary extra-bureaucracies, including the construction projects assessment office, construction services center, relocation and moving office, and urban science research institute (AI 2007–107).

  8. For a similar phenomenon in Eastern Europe, see Grzymala-Busse (2007) and O’Dwyer (2006).

  9. “Repeated cycles of bureaucratic inflation,” Caijing Magazine, May 20, 2013.

  10. A test of autocorrelation using the Wooldridge test finds serial autocorrelation in the residuals. This is expected as public employment generally increases each year, so the previous year’s values are highly correlated with the present year’s value. I correct for serial autocorrelation by adding corr(ar1) in the PCSE regression. This method is preferable to adding a lagged dependent variable to the regression, as a lagged dependent variable generates a highly inflated R2 value. As a robustness test, I ran the same analyses using lagged dependent variable instead of the corr(ar1) command, and find similar results.

  11. China National Organizational Statistics, pp. 1348–9.

  12. “Disgraced officials Zhou Yongkang and Bo Xilai formed ‘clique’ to challenge leaders,” South China Morning Post, January 15, 2015.

  13. “Zhou’s Dynasty,” Caixin, 2014, accessed at http://english.caixin.com/2014/ZhouYongkang/.

  14. See, “Hebei Qinglong district party secretary abruptly appoints 283 cadres,” Xinhua News, December 26, 2006.

  15. See, “Zhejiang city and county party secretaries who are leaving office shall not abruptly appoint cadres,” Ningbo Net, July 9, 2010.

  16. AI 2006–21; AI 200622

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Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank Pierre Landry for sharing his dataset on provincial leaders, as well as Jean Oi, Andrew Walder, Alberto Diaz-Cayeros, Mary Gallagher, Anna Grzymala-Busse, Allen Hicken, Yuhua Wang, and participants at the American and Midwest Political Science Association Meetings for helpful comments. 

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  1. Department of Political Science, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

    Yuen Yuen Ang

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Ang, Y.Y. Co-optation & Clientelism: Nested Distributive Politics in China’s Single-Party Dictatorship. St Comp Int Dev 51, 235–256 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12116-015-9208-0

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