Municipal Party Research Articles

Culture and Enterprise Rent-Seeking: Evidence from Native Place Networks among Officials in China

ABSTRACT Using data on Chinese municipal party secretaries (MPS), we study whether firms prefer to pay more to officials who have a wider native place network. In doing so, we find the state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are more willing to pay for benefits from an official’s native place network. Furthermore, we investigate why firms pay for access to officials who have a wider native place network. On the one hand, as an important political social resource, officials’ native place networks enhance the probability of officials’ promotion. The firm is just buying a “political call option.” On the other hand, an MPS’s native place network can help firms to have more merger and acquisition activity. Using officials’ native place networks, this article provides a new angle on the effect of traditional culture on rent-seeking by firms.

Political Turnover and the Performance of Local Public Enterprises

We study how political party turnover at the municipal level affects the economic performance of Italian Local Public Enterprises. To this end, we match data on municipal elections in Italy to the budget data of firms whose shares are owned by Italian municipalities. As political turnover and performance are likely to be jointly endogenous, we exploit the quasi-experimental nature of close electoral races to estimate the causal treatment effect. We find evidence that municipal party turnover disrupts investment and slows down productivity growth. At the same time, the probability of observing financial distress is larger. No significant effect can be established, on the other hand, in terms of profitability and employment growth. We link the effect of municipal party turnover to three mechanisms: first, the nature of close electoral races alters the incumbent party’s incentives to invest; second, turnover makes the appointment of new, less-experienced, board directors more likely; third, the new political leadership directly reduces the amount of resources transferred in order to signal its commitment to curb wasteful municipal expenditure. We finally set up a survival analysis, whose results show that municipal party turnover is associated to an increase in the likelihood to observe bankruptcy.

The impacts of environmental governance on political turnover of municipal party secretary in China

Political incentive is one of the most efficient methods to promote local officials to push for both economic growth and environmental progress in the context of China. Since previous scholars have never investigated the relationships between political turnover and environmental governance at the municipal level, in this work, we proxy pollution by SO2, COD, SOOT, and NHx and examine whether environmental performance affects the political turnover of the municipal party secretary by exploiting a panel conditional logit with a fixed-effect model for the period 2002-2013. The results indicate that environmental performance does not significantly impact the turnover of municipal party secretaries, offering evidence that an increase of SO2 is associated with the likelihood of promotion under the panel multinomial logit approach. However, a higher GDP growth rate plays the determinant factor affecting the promotion of China's municipal party secretaries. Specific policy recommendations are proposed in accordance with our empirical findings.

Political incentives, transformation efficiency and resource-exhausted cities

Abstract Since 2003, the evaluation system of government officials in China has undergone significant changes from relying on almost solely on traditional economic growth criteria to a broader set of indicators including environmental quality and per-capita disposable income of urban residents. Resource-exhausted cities face severe problems, such as environmental pollution and industrial restructuring, during this process of city transformation. While addressing these problems, local officials, especially local top leaders, play a very important role, because their performance under this new evaluation system, to a certain extent, impacts the transformation efficiency of resource-exhausted cities. Based on this, we analyze the relationship between political incentives and city transformation efficiency by applying a panel dataset of 37 resource-exhausted cities from the 2004–2014. The findings reveal that: (1) transformation efficiency has been improved noticeably over the final two years of the sample period following 8 years of fluctuation without meaningful improvement. (2) Of the factors which impact the transformation efficiency of resource-exhausted cities, foreign direct investment, fiscal deficit and number of internet users produce only weak effects. This indicates that investment openness, fiscal surplus of local government, and infrastructure construction are not key variables in boosting urban transformation. (3) The impact of political incentives on the transformation efficiency of resource-exhausted cities depends on whether the officials are municipal party secretaries or mayors. The results confirm that the existing authority structure in China has an effect on the transformation of resource-exhausted cities and imply that, in contrast to the municipal party secretaries, the mayors take a subordinate position in the authority structure, thus failing to exert their effective role in the process of urban transformation.

Impact of Municipal Political Decision Maker’s Tenure on Physical Urbanisation in China: A Empirical Study based on the Profiles of Secretaries of Municipal Party Committees

China’s rapid urbanisation in the past 30 years has been a prominent issue in the world. However, few studies elaborate on the rapid spatial urbanisation from the perspective of local decision makers (in particular the Secretaries of Municipal Party Committees-the SMPCs). Local governors are always seeking promotions as they are in a competitive bureaucratic hierarchy. This research is, therefore, intended to explain the local decision-making driving force of spatial urbanisation by analysing the interaction between local decision makers’ tenures and urban expansion. Based on the panel data of all 286 prefecture-level cities nationwide from 2000 to 2014, Stata 14.0 was applied to implement regression analysis. Research findings show that SMPCs have, in general, great incentives for promoting rapid urban development. Additionally, SMPCs who are transferred from other municipalities implement more rapid and larger-scale urban development than those who are locally promoted.

How Have Political Incentives for Local Officials Reduced the Environmental Pollution of Resource-depleted Cities?

Chinese resource-exhausted cities face more severe environmental pollution problems than other cities. In addressing these problems, the way local officials, usually senior party and government leaders, operate, is very important, in that their focus on political achievements may complicate how they manage environmental pollution in these cities. Based on this, we analyze the relationship between political incentives and environmental pollution by applying the 2004-2014 panel data from 37 resource-exhausted cities. The findings reveal that: (1) Local openness levels, degree of industrial upgrading and local investment in fixed assets are not the key variables in environmental pollution control. (2) The extent to which officials vie for political achievement affects environmental pollution in resource-exhausted cities. It depends on whether the officials are municipal party secretaries or mayors; the former play a greater dynamic role in environmental pollution and have a stronger robustness than the latter. The conclusion verifies that the selection of municipal party secretaries, rather than mayors, is particularly important in coming to terms with local environmental pollution.

How Have Political Incentives for Local Officials Reduced Environmental Pollution in Resource-Depleted Cities?

Chinese resource-exhausted cities face more severe environmental pollution problems than other cities. In addressing these problems, the way local officials (usually senior party and government leaders) operate is very important, as their focus on political achievements may complicate how they manage environmental pollution in these cities. On the one hand, the traditional Gross Domestic Product-based quest for political achievement may lead top leaders to de-emphasize environmental pollution. On the other hand, changes made in 2003 to the way the performance of Chinese officials is evaluated have encouraged some local senior party and government leaders to pay more attention to environmental problems. Based on this, we analyze the relationship between political incentives and environmental pollution by applying the 2004–2014 panel data from 37 resource-exhausted cities. The findings reveal that firstly, among the factors which impact the environmental pollution of resource-exhausted cities, investment in fixed assets, foreign direct investment, industrial structure, per-capita education expenditure, and population density do not have a significant impact, thus indicating that local openness levels, the degree of industrial upgrading, and local investment in fixed assets are not the key variables in environmental pollution control. Secondly, the extent to which officials vie for political achievement affects environmental pollution in resource-exhausted cities. This depends upon whether the officials are municipal party secretaries or mayors; the former play a greater dynamic role in environmental pollution and have stronger robustness than the latter. The conclusion verifies both the existing authority structure of China and its effectiveness in the control of environmental pollution of resource-exhausted cities. That is to say, in contrast to the principles of the party committees, the mayors are in a subordinate position and often fail to fully and effectively exercise their functions. Accordingly, we point out that the selection of municipal party secretaries, rather than mayors, is particularly important in coming to terms with local environmental pollution.

Local Official’s Turnover and Economic Growth: Evidence from a Quasi Natural Experiment

Recently, local official’s promotion incentive has a significant link with economic performance. With the selection and promotion of officials’ mechanism, they may have a positive effect on local economic development. This paper will choose the data of 283 secretaries of municipal Party committee and mayors and observe the impact of local officials’ turnover by controlling other variables and DID. And we find that it will have a significant impact on local economic performance. In the meantime, the heterogeneity of officials and frequency of turnover can interpret this mechanism, and this paper may give a positive consideration to the regional economic growth and has a certain significant guiding aiming at assessment of officials’ promotion and political selection.

Local Official’s Turnover and Economic Growth: Evidence from a Quasi Natural Experiment

Recently, local official’s promotion incentive has a significant link with economic performance. With the selection and promotion of officials’ mechanism, they may have a positive effect on local economic development. This paper will choose the data of 283 secretaries of municipal Party committee and mayors and observe the impact of local officials’ turnover by controlling other variables and DID. And we find that it will have a significant impact on local economic performance. In the meantime, the heterogeneity of officials and frequency of turnover can interpret this mechanism, and this paper may give a positive consideration to the regional economic growth and has a certain significant guiding aiming at assessment of officials’ promotion and political selection.

Promotion incentives for local officials and the expansion of urban construction land in China: Using the Yangtze River Delta as a case study

China’s promotion incentive is the main motivation behind local officials’ decisions regarding the expansion of urban construction land, and is therefore crucial to understanding the mechanism behind the expansion of urban construction land. This paper discusses the promotion incentive’s theoretical influence on urban construction land expansion. Then, using 25 cities in the Yangtze River Delta region (including Shanghai and prefecture-level cities in the provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang) as samples, we estimate two econometric models that reflect the relationship between local officials’ characteristics and changes in the scale and efficiency of urban construction land to test the specific influence of different local officials on the expansion of urban construction land when driven by the promotion incentive. Our results show that the promotion sources of local officials and their terms in office significantly impact changes in the urban construction land scale and utilization efficiency. We also found that the ages of local officials significantly impact the efficiency of urban construction land use, but have an insignificant impact on the expansion of urban construction land. Considering China’s unique administrative system, the promotion incentive has a definite but divergent influence on mayors and municipal party secretaries regarding urban expansion. This paper concludes with policy proposals to improve the administrative management system and regulation on urban construction land expansion.

Does Corruption Hinder Private Businesses? Leadership Stability and Predictable Corruption in China

We study whether corruption hinders businesses by investigating China's private enterprises, which have developed rapidly despite high corruption levels. We argue that a key factor determining the effects of corruption is corruption predictability, which is significantly influenced by government leadership stability. When the same leaders remain in major offices for long tenures, corruption is relatively predictable, reducing hindrance to businesses. When leaders change frequently, entrepreneurs need to constantly cultivate new connections with officials and face more uncertainty; therefore, corruption becomes a major obstacle. We conduct field interviews to explore channels through which leadership stability encourages predictable corruption. We also use the 2012 World Bank Enterprise Survey of Chinese private firms and develop a novel measure of leadership stability of the local Chinese government based on a self‐collected data set of municipal party committees to test our hypotheses. Results of various models are consistent with our hypotheses.

Privileged policies versus lack of care and engagement: the lives of retired veteran cadres in a residential community of Jinan Municipal Party Committee, China

The Retirement System for Veteran Cadres (Lixiu) is one part of China’s dual-track retirement system. According to some official policies, retired veteran cadres should enjoy a number of privileges in terms of pension, health care, use of government vehicle, housing and peculiar political rights. Based on participant observation and semi-structured interview, the study looks into the life of the population in a residential community of Jinan Municipal Party Committee, Shandong Province. By incorporating Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory, the study finds that in China, services for retired cadres still fall short of the expectations of policy. Establishment of ‘big communities’ with the idea of ageing-in-place is suggested.

Promoting City Leaders: The Structure of Political Incentives in China

AbstractThe shift in Beijing's priorities to more balanced and people-oriented development has led some localities to make more efforts in developing social policy areas. By investigating the personnel institution, a political incentive mechanism, this article aims to shed light on the structure of political incentives in China and why local political leaders improve public welfare in a non-democratic setting. A content analysis of 69 regulations that cover one-third of all municipal leaders shows that the formal evaluation rules for leaders in some localities have become more welfare-oriented to reflect Beijing's new focus on social policy areas. A statistical analysis further reveals that different political incentives operate for municipal Party leaders and mayors, and that political incentives to develop social policy vary across geographic regions. The statistical analysis exploits an original dataset I compiled from an online archive and statistical yearbooks, and contains biographic and career history data on municipal leaders between 2003 and 2010.

Gender Quotas and Women's Political Leadership

Though more than 100 countries have adopted gender quotas, the impacts of these reforms on women’s political leadership remain largely unknown. We exploit a quasi-experiment — a zipper quota imposed by the Swedish Social Democratic national party on municipal party groups — to examine quotas’ effect on women’s selection and survival as leaders within their parties. We find that those municipalities where the quota had a larger impact became more likely to appoint female leaders, but not more likely to support the reelection of women to the post. Extending this analysis, we show that the quota increased the number of qualified female candidates without increasing the diversity among women within the group. These results lend support to the notion that quotas may have an acceleration effect on women’s representation in leadership posts and help dispel the myth that quotas trade short-term gains in women’s descriptive representation for long-term exclusion from political power.

Disciplining the Party

When Chinese president Xi Jinping vowed to crack down on both senior leaders and low-level bureaucrats - or tigers and flies as he put it (laohu cangying yiqida ????-??) - after he was elected to the post of CCP General Secretary in November 2012, few could have thought that his words could grow into one of the largest campaigns against corruption and petty officialdom in China's modern history. Since then, dozens of powerful leaders, along with many low-level officials, have been put under investigation, indicted, or convicted, including former Chongqing Party secretary Bo Xilai, a score of senior officials, and stateowned enterprise executives connected to former security tsar Zhou Yongkang, PLA Central Military Commission vice-chairman Xu Caihou, and, more recently, the vice-chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), Su Rong.(1)For all its unprecedented scale and intensity, to what extent can the anti-corruption campaign curtail widespread corruption in the long run?This article takes the view that Xi Jinping's anti-corruption drive resembles a party-building campaign for amassing political power amidst China's fragmented power structure rather than a systemic remedy to cure endemic corruption. Although the anti-corruption drive appears unswerving, given its unceasing effort in probing high-ranking officials and its expansive scope of investigation that has been spilling into formerly unchallenged sectors, the campaign is likely to fall short of its claimed ambition. A closer look at the campaign indicates that it relies heavily on the opaque Party disciplinary mechanism rather than on the legal system to investigate and punish officials. In addition, the campaign catalyses the concentration of power among Party agencies affiliated with Xi in the name of anti-corruption as opposed to installing genuine checks and balances. Consequently, the campaign might reinforce the authoritarian system that has engendered widespread graft in the first place, and could sow seeds of future corruption.A dramatic beginningXi Jinping's extensive campaign against graft began with one of the most unlikely and dramatic episodes in Chinese politics. In February 2012, Wang Lijun, then head of Chongqing's Public Security Bureau, fled to the US Consulate in Chengdu in an alleged attempt to seek political asylum. After the United States reportedly denied Wang's request, his failed defection cracked open a Pandora's Box that exposed the biggest political scandal in the Chinese Communist Party since the fall of former Shanghai municipal Party secretary Chen Liangyu in 2006. It brought to light the alleged murder of an English businessman by Gu Kailai, wife of then Chongqing Party chief Bo Xilai, and triggered widespread rumours of a fermenting coup plot against Xi Jinping involving both Bo and retired public security tsar Zhou Yongkang. Within a month, Bo, once a likely candidate for promotion to the elite Politburo Standing Committee, was dismissed for serious disciplinary violations and was subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment for bribery, embezzlement, and abuse of power.Bo's political scandal, which followed a year-long probe into former Minister of Railways Liu Zhijun, paved the way for Xi Jinping to make anti-corruption a centrepiece of his agenda right after he came to power. In his first speech as Party General Secretary, Xi highlighted the importance of cracking down on graft and corruption:In this new environment, our Party is confronted with many severe challenges. There are many pressing problems within the Party that needs [sic] to be resolved urgently, especially the graft and corruption cases that occurred to some of the Party members and cadres, being out of touch from the general public, bureaucracy and undue emphasis on formalities - they must be resolved with great efforts. The whole Party must be vigilant against them. To forge iron, one must be strong. …

Career Backgrounds of Municipal Party Secretaries in China

This article examines the career backgrounds of municipal Chinese Communist Party secretaries between 1990 and 2011. Based on an analysis of 898 cadre biographies and 32 interviews with local government officials during 2011 and 2013, this article shows that the majority of municipal party secretaries had spent their careers working at the provincial and municipal levels, while only few advanced up from the county. Our analysis finds that obstacles hindering leading county cadres from rising to the upper ranks of the municipal apparatus include age and education restrictions; limited positions at the municipal level; the lack of networks linking to provincial leaders; and provincial leaders’ appointment preferences. Limited career advancement opportunities for county cadres have important implications for understanding the incentive foundations of China’s bureaucracy. With only slim prospects for leading county cadres to rise to top municipal positions, the political incentives outlined in the cadre evaluation system might not be as effective in steering cadre behavior as currently claimed in the literature.

Inside a Chinese Communist Municipal Newspaper: Purges at the Beijing Daily

The Beijing Daily, the flagship media outlet of the Beijing Municipal Party, was one of the most influential newspapers established in the early years of the People’s Republic of China. The newspaper’s principal purpose was to propagate the remarkable achievements of the Chinese Communist Party and to demonstrate the superiority of the Chinese socialist system over the capitalist one. Newly available archival sources reveal a depressing and disturbing story behind the façade of authoritative reporting: an interlocking system of control of editorial management, stringent censorship, skillful manipulation of news, and carefully selected readers’ letters in praise of the Communist regime. In the early 1960s, in contrast to the harmonious picture of Chinese society depicted by the newspaper, senior editorial staff were caught in the middle of life-and-death ideological infighting between the radical Maoists and the pragmatists in the central Party leadership. The staff used a variety of techniques – double talk, fence-sitting, paying lip service to the official lines and conducting self-criticism – to navigate through the perilous political shoals. But they were eventually purged by the Maoists during the Cultural Revolution for siding with the pragmatists. Chinese journalists, including the Beijing Daily staff who worked in the system, lived a precarious life in the authoritarian environment.

Establishing the Good Environment and Building a Famous Tourist City

It is known to a lot of people that the great superiority of Tai’an lies in Mount Tai which is very famous both in China and in the world. Every year it attracts a great number of tourists all over the world, which helps to develop Tai’an’s economy. So Tai’an Municipal Party Committee and Tai’an Municipal Government have put forward the developing objective of “building great Mount Tai, opening up a big market, developing great tourism and constructing great business[1].” As we know, environmental protection and construction are also very important for the tourist, economic and social development [2]. In this paper, combined with the reality of Tai’an City, the authors analyze the existing problems of its development and put forward many concrete suggestions which will be helpful to realize the above objective.

Why are some Flemish municipal party group leaders more familiar with NPM principles than others? Assessing the influence of individual factors.

This study addresses the controversy in the literature regarding the effects of individual factors on party group leaders’ familiarity with a selection of New Public Management concepts. In doing so, it contributes to the scarce literature regarding this group of non-executive politicians. Furthermore, this study has an innovative methodological approach, introducing an NPM “familiarity coefficient” in order to make a quantitative assessment. Data was gathered from a survey of 363 party group leaders in Flemish municipalities and the results reveal moderate familiarity. Factors that had a positive effect on the NPM familiarity coefficient were being a majority leader, dual mandate holding and financial as well as political expertise.

Soil Nutrient Assessment for Urban Ecosystems in Hubei, China

Recent urban landscape vegetation surveys conducted in many cities in China identified numerous plant nutrient deficiencies, especially in newly developed cities. Soil nutrients and soil nutrient management in the cities of Hubei province have not received adequate attention to date. The aims of this study were to characterize the available nutrients of urban soils from nine cities in Hubei province, China, and to assess how soil nutrient status is related to land use type and topography. Soil nutrients were measured in 405 sites from 1,215 soil samples collected from four land use types (park, institutional [including government building grounds, municipal party grounds, university grounds, and garden city institutes], residential, and roadside verges) and three topographies (mountainous [142–425 m a.s.l], hilly [66–112 m a.s.l], and plain [26–30 m a.s.l]). Chemical analyses showed that urban soils in Hubei had high pH and lower soil organic matter, available nitrogen (N), available phosphorus (P), and available boron (B) concentrations than natural soils. Nutrient concentrations were significantly different among land use types, with the roadside and residential areas having greater concentrations of calcium (Ca), sulfur (S), copper (Cu), manganese (Mn), and zinc (Zn) that were not deficient against the recommended ranges. Topographic comparisons showed statistically significant effects for 8 of the 11 chemical variables (p < 0.05). Concentrations of N, Ca, Mg, S, Cu, and Mn in plain cities were greater than those in mountainous cities and show a negative correlation with city elevation. These results provide data on urban soils characteristics in land use types and topography, and deliver significant information for city planners and policy makers.