Elite Capture

Abstract

Political decentralization is often argued to strengthen political accountability by bringing government closer to the people. Social and civic institutions at the local level, such as lineage associations, temples, churches, or social clubs, can make it easier for citizens to monitor officials and hold them accountable. This article argues that strong social institutions also empower local elites who may use their informal influence to control their group and capture rents. Drawing on evidence from case studies of Chinese villages, the article shows that lineage group leaders who become village officials use their combination of social and political authority to confiscate villagers’ land. Evidence from a survey experiment suggests that endorsement of a land confiscation plan by lineage elites elicits greater compliance with property seizures. A national survey indicates that when a lineage leader becomes a village cadre, it is associated with a 14 to 20 percent increase in the likelihood of a land expropriation. The findings demonstrate how informal institutions and local civil society can be tools of top-down political control.

How grassroots cadres broker land taking in urbanizing China

“…This surge of land taking has sparked considerable opposition, including acts of individual resistance (Hess 2010;Erie 2012;Deng 2017), collective petitioning (Cai 2003;Hurst et al 2014;Gui 2017;Heurlin 2020), and popular protest (Guo 2001 These techniques include: relying on professional relocation companies to negotiate with homeowners (Ho 2013a); deploying relatives to apply pressure on reluctant evictees (Deng and O'Brien 2013;Deng 2015, 2017;Luo et al 2017, Luo and Andreas, this issue); depending on religious leaders and lineage elites to get their members to accept requisition offers (Mattingly 2016(Mattingly , 2020; turning to neighbours to prod holdouts into relenting (Deng 2017); using one-on-one bargaining in government offices and the promise of urban residence to pre-empt group resistance (Hsing 2010;Lee and Zhang 2013;Chuang 2014); and channelling disputes into more readily-controlled courts (He 2014).…”

Land Rights, Industrialization, and Urbanization: China in Comparative Context

“…Sargeson [ 63 ] examines the relationship between collective land ownership and villagers’ participation in self-government, measured in terms of deliberative decision making and leadership turnover in elections, and finds a positive relationship. While villagers are active in village self-governance, there is unresolved debate about whether, in the context of managing property rights over land, cadres serve the interests of the state [ 48 ], their familial networks [ 77 ], villagers [ 10 ], or themselves [ 93 ]. Kan [ 36 ] finds that “lineage loyalties and kinship networks can be activated both in facilitating land dispossession and in mobilising against it.” Indian villages are similarly divided by caste and class, and Levien (2011; 2021) calls for further study to explain instances of cross-class and cross-caste solidarity in resisting dispossession.…”

Private vs. Community Management Responses to De-Collectivization: Illustrative Cases from China

“…From central to local levels, the government shares administrative responsibility. While administrative authority over land use in China ultimately resides with central state officials from the county level and above, the ownership of local land by village collectives provides village-level officials a great deal of influence (Mattingly, 2016). Top-down decentralization plans can encounter push-back from robust village leadership representing collective interests, supported by the national Law of Village Autonomy (Cui, 2002), which can mitigate pitfalls of policy design and adjust to local historic, institutional and biophysical conditions.…”