A Fiscal Sociological Theory of Authoritarian Resilience

Zhang, Changdong

doi:10.1177/0735275117693038

Cited by 16 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 94 publications

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“…People are indifferent to the dominant indirect tax in China. 61 Representation is granted by the government leaders themselves in regions affluent in discretionary fiscal resources. Thus, the logic is "no money, no representation."…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

No Money, No Representation: A Case Study of Zeguo Town in China

2018

Politics & Society

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Authoritarian regimes rely on fiscal resources to build patronage networks. And so it is with China. Budget making is usually dominated by government leaders. However, some local governments in recent years have invited ordinary people to review budgets and even to determine parts of budgets. Why would local leaders make themselves accountable to their constituencies in an authoritarian setting? Why would local governments in China tie their own hands? Using detailed description of a township government, this article argues that fiscal affluence based on land is an important factor for local governments in launching fiscal reform. Richer areas have become more fiscally accountable by opening up new discussion and encouraging citizen participation.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

No Money, No Representation: A Case Study of Zeguo Town in China

2018

Politics & Society

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“…34 Huang 20142015;Shi 2017. 35 Friedman 2017Zhang, Changdong 2017. ownership. The points-based system has since become the most contested factor in central-local conflicts.…”

Section: Decentralized Hukou Reform: Institutional Drift 1992-2013mentioning

confidence: 99%

Guarding a New Great Wall: The Politics of Household Registration Reforms and Public Provision in China

Hong

Tseng

Lin

2022

The China Quarterly

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The household registration (hukou) system has been widely recognized as a key contributory factor to social inequality and tensions in China yet it remains intact despite a series of institutional reforms. What explains the resilience of the system? In this study, we address this puzzle by drawing on policy documents, statistical data and interviews. We argue that the hukou system remains because it is used to protect the beneficiaries of welfare provision and to ensure pivotal groups continue to offer political support. We find that owing to the reforms, a formidable barrier has been erected between the guarded cities and other regions to protect healthcare and education resources from inbound migrant workers. Consequently, the institutional reforms of the hukou system serve as a political contrivance for the survival of the Chinese party-state regime. The findings contribute to emerging literature on China's political control by elaborating political elites’ subtle tactics through various institutions at central and local levels. We expect the new “Great Wall” established under Xi's administration to be an even stronger barrier than before for migrants during the current pandemic and in the future.

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“…11 The latter group is called the southbound cadre groups. The CCP's central committee appointed members of this group as local leaders in "new liberalized regions" like Zhejiang.12 In the case of the third frontier, the disadvantaged geographic location led to more state investment in heavy industries in some Southwest and Northwest mountainous regions.13 Zhang and Liu (2019) andKoss (2018) take the civil war and Sino-Japanese war as the watershed event.14 While Koss does not study economic development, the development of the private sector could also be viewed as nonimplementation or selective implementation of central policies, as we have discussed above.15 For a study of national level institutional change, specifically fiscal reform, seeWhiting (2001) andZhang (2017).16 In a study of Brazil's industrialization,Evans (1979) emphasizes the triple alliance among multinational corporations, local private entrepreneurs, and SOEs in the context of state power, as the key to understanding "dependent development." Based on that, Chen (2018) further disaggregate the state by investigating bureaucratic fragmentation and sees how businesses penetrated the fragmented bureaucracy in forming coalitions.17 Weak institutions featured in this study include the fusion of public and private interests (vs. bureaucratic professionalism), partial (vs. impartial) regulation, campaign style (vs. routine) policy implementation, indiscriminate and uncoordinated (vs. selective) industrial promotion policies, and incentives for petty fee extractions (vs. eradicating corruption).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…For a study of national level institutional change, specifically fiscal reform, see Whiting () and Zhang ().…”

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confidence: 99%

Reexamine regional models of China's economic growth: Toward an integrated analytical framework

Zhang

2020

Sociology Compass

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Based on a selective review of studies of regional development models in China, this article develops an integrated analytical framework, which includes two dimensions. First, a static dimension that integrates national institutions with regional specific structural and informal institutional factors, specifically historical legacies, how they interact with each other to shape local actors' incentives, constraints and strategies of survival, therefore explain different regional models. Second, it includes a dynamic dimension that explores the historical evolution of regional models, with a focus on the coevolution or mutual transformation of different institutions with feedback effects.China's rapid economic growth in the last forty years is considered an economic miracle, and it was achieved when China faces dual task of industrialization and marketization. Across a large body of literature, 1 scholars have provided a variety of theories to explain this occurrence, some of which use Western models, while others try to build new theories based on China experiences specifically. This article focuses selectively on regional development models, their origins, and their evolution (convergence or divergence), and argues in favor of an integrated analytical framework (Tang 2015) for analyzing China's regional economic development.Based on a comprehensive review of both classic and the newest research findings, this article builds off of approaches focused on the new regionalism of China's political economy (Rithmire, 2014), while departing from them. The integrated analytical framework has two dimensions. First, the static dimension integrates national institutions with regional specific structural and informal institutional factors (specifically historical legacies). It describes how they interact with each other to shape local actors' incentives, constraints, and strategies of survival, and therefore explains different regional models. Second, the dynamic dimension explores the historical evolution of regional models, how the development outcomes change the national and subnational level (informal) institutions, with a focus on the coevolution or mutual transformation of different institutions with feedback effects (or both, such as Whiting, 2001). I illustrate the complex relationships between these institutions in Figure 1.

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A Fiscal Sociological Theory of Authoritarian Resilience

Cited by 16 publications

References 94 publications

No Money, No Representation: A Case Study of Zeguo Town in China

No Money, No Representation: A Case Study of Zeguo Town in China

Guarding a New Great Wall: The Politics of Household Registration Reforms and Public Provision in China

Reexamine regional models of China's economic growth: Toward an integrated analytical framework

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