D. Estas ,sois muy patentes, cinocidas yy claras
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The final part of the empirical analysis probes whether the paramount leader can capi-talize on his authority to rotate his supporters more frequently than ordinary cadres. The purpose of this strategy is to make full use of a given number of core loyalists to “cast a longer shadow” over provincial politics. To test the fourth hypothesis, the unit of analysis is changed from transfers to individuals. A separate dataset is constructed which contains 464
Figure 2.5: Frequency of rotation for individual cadres: 1992-2014
officials that served in PSC between 1992 and 2014. By the end of 2014, these individuals have experienced at least one and at most four inter-provincial transfers. Figure 2.5 shows the proportion of cases that fall into each of these four categories. As the histograms made clear, over 80 percent of ordinary cadres have been transferred only once. By contrast, for the key supporters of each paramount leader, there is a greater proportion of cases that experienced two or more transfers.
To see whether this difference is significant in a statistical sense, I estimate an OLS regression with the total times of inter-provincial rotation for an individual as the dependent variable. The explanatory variable is a binary indicator of whether the individual is a key supporter. The economic status of the province from which the official was first transferred is used as a proxy for provincial origins. The model also controls for the age of the official when the first transfer occurred, as the earlier one experienced the first move, the more
Table 2.6: OLS estimation of the relationship between patronage and times of rotation
Dependent variable: Total times of rotation by 2014
(1) (2)
transfers might be accumulated over one’s career. Table 2.6 provides the results of the analysis. Clearly, being a client of paramount leaders increases the number of rotations, and the effect is highly significant. Column 2 shows that, holding other variables constant, key supporters on average experience 0.29 more transfers than ordinary cadres. There is also some evidence that, the later one receives his or her first rotation during the career, the fewer transfers one will experience in the end. The magnitude of the effect, however, is very small.
The finding that key supporters are rotated more intensively complicates the conven-tional wisdom on leadership reshuffling in developing countries. In existing studies, frequent rotation of subordinates is usually explained by the ruler’s sense of distrust and insecurity:
state officials are reshuffled to prevent the development of strong power bases (Migdal, 1987;
Bratton and Van de Walle, 1994). Accordingly, the more the dictator trusts his agents, the less need to rotate them intensively. This view fails to recognize how rotation of personal supporters may be used to extend the dictator’s influence over more agencies or geographical
regions. Specifically in the Chinese context, rotation is also employed to award loyalists with the credential of governing multiple provinces, which will considerably strengthen the case for selecting them into national leadership in the future.
2.6 Conclusion
The global spread of one-party autocracies has sparked a heated discussion about the effect of party institutions on authoritarian durability. In this debate, a prevailing school of thought contends that parties promote equitable distribution of power among the ruling elites, reducing the danger of destructive, destabilizing conflicts among regime insiders. It is argued that impersonal decision-making rules embedded in authoritarian parties afford different factions an opportunity to participate in the political process; regular meetings of collective bodies makes it easier for the ruling elites to monitor and contain the dictator’s unilateralism. The sense of collective security encourages power-holders to pursue their interests within the party organizations rather than challenge the regime from without.
But can one-party regimes really establish institutional rules to meaningfully constrain the dictators? Policy-making process in authoritarian countries is widely known to be highly informal, with the supreme leaders often bypassing laws and regulations to benefit their inner circle. Cross-national studies focus on the empirical correlations between the presence of party organizations and regime resilience, whereas the actual effects of formal institutions on the dynamics of power-sharing are little discussed. In this paper, I utilized an in-depth study of China’s appointment system to examine whether the CCP’s collective decision-making rules can constrain the paramount leader’s personal agenda of patronage distribution.
Our analysis reveals a complicated relationship between formal institutions, informal rules, and the distribution of political influence that is rarely captured in previous studies.
On the one hand, there is no evidence that the CCP’s general secretary can appoint a much greater number of key supporters to provincial posts during his tenure, or assign them to provinces with greater strategic value. This findings shows that the general secretary faces
strong intra-party pressure to share high-level positions with other factions, and such power-sharing is effectively enforced through formal personnel procedures and collective deliberation inside the Politburo Standing Committee. On the other hand, the general secretary does manage to favor his supporters in subtle, less blatant ways. The loyalists are markedly more likely to get important provincial posts such as party secretary and governor, and they are rotated more frequently to spread the influence of their patron. The paramount leader may have accomplished this feat by manipulating or circumventing existing procedures. It is also possible that other ruling elites recognize the need to grant the general secretary “constrained supremacy” so that the actions of the oligarchy are better coordinated to deal with various challenges, while the danger of personal dictatorship is contained by institutions.
Given that the paramount leader’s assertion of personnel power is at once constrained by formal rules and enabled by behind-the-scene maneuvers, we may need to reconsider the conventional wisdom regarding the sources of authoritarian resilience. It is true that strong institutions play a key role in preventing personal dictatorship and enhancing elite solidarity, but overly rigid rules might smother leadership initiative and discretion that is badly needed in rapidly changing societies. In closed regimes that proscribe any political organization outsider of the ruling party, personal cliques founded on patron-client ties could provide a cohesive support group for the paramount leader to consolidate power and impose authority. In reality, most authoritarian regimes probably sustain themselves by maintaining a delicate balance between stable institutions and strong personal leadership. Here, intensive studies of authoritarian internal polities can still provide invaluable insights to supplement cross-national quantitative analysis.