Term Limits and Authoritarian Power Sharing: Theory and Evidence From China

Abstract

Term limits that effectively govern leadership transition play an important role in authoritarian power sharing. A fixed term and a pre-appointed successor – two crucial components of term limits – credibly commit the incumbent ruler to share power with other elites, and also allow the elites to monitor and coordinate against the ruler's transgression of the power-sharing agreement. While the successful adoption of term limits often requires an even balance of power among the ruling elites in the first place, once adopted it initiates an evolving bargain over allocation of political power among multiple generations of leaders that further keeps any one faction from dominating the others. I corroborate this argument using a biographical dataset of elite members of the Chinese Communist Party from 1982 to 2012. The findings suggest that the Party's incumbent leaders and their rivals (i.e., predecessor and heir-apparent) shared equal chances in promoting their associates—which proxy their political influence—and this pattern has become more salient since the 16th party congress, when the term limits that currently govern China's leadership transition became fully fledged. This result also sheds light on the role of informal, patronage-based promotion in the institutionalization of authoritarian politics.

Dictator’s Shadow

“…In explaining the CCP's durability, scholars point to China-specific leadership institutions, norms, and procedures, which in theory facilitate stable power sharing. In particular, prior research points to: organisational fragmentation that prevents incumbents from monopolising power (Lampton and Lieberthal 1992;Xu 2011), age and term limits that prevent incumbents from entrenching themselves in office (Ma 2016;Nathan 2003;Shirk 2002;Manion 1993), along with procedures for collective decision-making that incorporate lower levels through reciprocal accountability (Shirk 1993;Hu 2014).…”

“…Another, more ambiguous, set of norms concerns the selection and grooming of successors, a perennial source of friction and uncertainty in non-democratically constituted regimes. The CCP is thought to have made in-roads into this problem by extending the succession process across overlapping generations, whereby leaders-in-waiting take on key roles within the PBSC in advance of their expected promotion (Ma 2016). This staggered approach has two important implications.…”

“…That is, by preventing incumbents from hand-picking their own successor but allowing them to appoint prospective leaders who might one day succeed their successor, CCP norms extend the shadow of the incumbent at least two generations ahead. In theory, this iterative process ought to ensure some balance of personal power within the top echelon of leaders (Ma 2016). Ironically, although Hu Chunhua is highly unlikely to be promoted in the future, his presence as one of only three PB members young enough to be named General Secretary in 2022 is at least a symbolic nod to the idea of staggered succession, insofar as he is widely seen as having been Hu Jintao's nominee from 2012.…”

Clientelism by Design: Personnel Politics under Xi Jinping

“…Before the lifting of the presidential term limit, some scholars would go even further, describing Xi's centralisation of power as the first step in a profound reform of the system towards greater institutionalisation (Wang and Zeng 2016). Conversely, the lifting of the term limit -an institutional mechanism described as a pillar of Chinese elite politics' relative stability since the 1980s (Ma 2016) -provides fresh support for those arguing that Xi's reforms aim at a simple personalisation of power, at the expense of the Party (Shirk 2018). Finally, they are others who try to find a middle way, refusing to see the relationship between Xi's personal power and the Party's organisational strength as a zerosum game (Guerguiev 2018).…”

Taming factions in the Chinese Communist party

“…More and more researchers have come to realize that factions and institutions do not independently affect important outcomes in Chinese politics, but they interact in complex ways. On the one hand, institutions set the rules of political games and constrain factions' choices of strategies (Ma 2016). On the other hand, institutions in an authoritarian regime is often malleable, and institutional reforms can be utilized by a faction to change the game in its favor (Wang and Vangeli, 2016).…”