Minor monarchs: The ‘Bad-Emperor’ problem in Chinese history

Abstract

How important is the age and experience of political leaders for the quality of governance? I explore this question in the context of imperial China, where autocratic rule centered on the institution of the emperor persisted for nearly 2,000 years. While the issue of child emperors is frequently discussed in the historiography of China, the impact of minor rulers has not been explored empirically. Using rich biographical information on the lives of rulers, I show evidence consistent with the notion that the age of emperors mattered for the effective administration of the Chinese state. In particular, the incidences of minor monarchs appear to accelerate the decline of a dynasty and occur more frequently toward the end of an imperial dynasty. The rule of minor monarchs coincides with the timing of dynastic crises, nomadic attacks, peasant revolts, and declines in fiscal capacity. To assess causality, I conduct two tests. First, I validate my baseline findings using an instrumental variable strategy that exploits the early but natural deaths of preceding emperors. Second, I show that estimated relationships become stronger after the Tang-Song transition, during which the administrative power of the emperor increased dramatically relative to that of the civilian bureaucracy. Overall, the results in this paper suggest that in the absence of institutional constraints, weak executive leadership can lead to poor national outcomes even in a highly bureaucratized state.