Abstract
In this chapter, I conclude the book with a summary of its findings, a discussion of several avenues for future research, and a set of policy suggestions. Through formal models and a case study on post-reform China, the book changes the way we used to understand the relationship between economic growth and the resilience of an authoritarian regime by showing that the effect of the former is actually not monotonic as previously assumed. Intuitively, economic prosperity strengthens the regime as it will raise the costs for people in the regime to deviate from the status quo and cope with their collective action problem to topple the regime. I contend that economic growth nonetheless has an opposite effect for upsetting the original balance of power among political elites. More critically, in addition to the finding about the (endogenously) destabilizing effect of authoritarian institutions, the book also helps us understand how they change. The findings have implications for both academics and policymakers who would like to assess the political effects of economic engagement with dictatorships.
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Notes
- 1.
Jaime FlorCruz. “The Xi Jinping cipher: Reformer or a ‘dictator?’” July 16, 2014, CNN. Available at https://edition.cnn.com/2014/07/15/world/asia/xi-reformist-or-tyrant/index.html (Accessed May 19, 2018).
- 2.
The Bureau was moved to the Ministry of Commerce in 2003 when the State Economic and Trade Commission was dismembered. For more information about this bureau, visit http://dcj.mofcom.gov.cn/
- 3.
One of them is a state-owned enterprise and the other two are joint ventures.
- 4.
Lysine is normally used as an additive to animal feed.
- 5.
By contrast, in the USA, the injury of dumping to domestic producers is determined by an independent organ, the International Trade Commission. Of course, it is debatable how independent and non-political the Commission really is (Hansen 1990), but at least it enjoys an independent administrative status that is lacking in the Chinese case.
- 6.
Answering the question of how high both features have to be for the mechanisms to work needs cross-national studies to estimate the threshold and hence is beyond the scope of the current study. However, as our descriptive account of China’s institutional environment in Part II shows, it is beyond doubt that China falls right in this category of highly institutionalized autocracies.
- 7.
What should be noted here is that the extension in this section is more about static comparisons between different authoritarian regimes based on the conceptual innovations made in the book.
- 8.
Historically, the period of the leadership transition in authoritarian regimes can be the most dangerous moment for their survival. Oftentimes, this is the time when the previously excluded challengers make coup or revolution attempts. The assassination of the former Spanish premier, Luis Carrero Blanco, by Basque secessionists in 1973 is a good example. The event happened only six months after Carrero succeeded Francisco Franco as Spain’s prime minister and directly contributed to the final collapse of the Franquist regime (Share 1986). The focus of the analysis here, however, is to show that political tension can still arise even if external threats are absent.
- 9.
This paradigm has a long-lasting influence on how scholars and policymakers think about countries without elections, among which China is surely the most prominent one. For instance, in his seminal paper on international negotiations, Robert D. Putnam writes:
…diplomats representing an entrenched dictatorship are less able than representatives of a democracy to claim credibly that domestic pressures preclude some disadvantageous deal. (1988, p. 449)
This view, however, fails to appreciate well enough the presence of domestic agency problems between authoritarian leaders and their selectorate.
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Tung, H.H. (2019). Conclusions. In: Economic Growth and Endogenous Authoritarian Institutions in Post-Reform China. Politics and Development of Contemporary China. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04828-0_10
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