Abstract
In China, when top leaders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) meet intractable intraparty struggles, they may resort to revision of party history for the settlement. This has become an idiosyncratic tactic in China's elite politics that draws scholars’ interests. How does party history revision solve leadership struggles? I argue that this repetitive phenomenon can be explained to a certain degree by path dependence. This research investigates the historical process of how party history was enmeshed in intraparty struggles, institutionalized, and exerted path-dependent impact. By reviewing the process, I find that a political tactic at an early critical juncture may engender institutionalization, generate path-dependent effect, and push historical development along a particular path. Path dependence may lead the same phenomenon to repetitively occur across time.
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