Party Secretary Research Articles

Has Nguyen Phu Trong's Leadership Curbed Economic Reform? Economic Reform Trends in Vietnam

This paper argues how the features of Vietnam's political‐administrative system and their recent changes have affected economic reform, particularly reform of state‐owned enterprises. After the 12th Party Congress in 2016, the Party Secretary General Nguyen Phu Trong's administration has seemed to exaggerate its conservative and totalitarian‐looking rule in the political arena. In contrast, the economic reform policies introduced by Trong's administration seem more transformative and progressive. This paper suggests that this contradiction must indicate changes in the policies relating to the state management of economic entities and/or a disguised form of reform to retain state influence over economic management, both of which tend to end up with pervasive rent‐seeking practices.

Are Pilot Experiments Random? Evidence from China’s Social Security Expansion

This paper provides new evidence of how political regimes and social connections determine participation in pilot experiments. Using data from China’s national pilot experiments of New Rural Pension Scheme (NRPS), we show that county-level charac- teristics and political regime have explanation power in the early stage of county pilot decision. Local party secretaries connected to Central Committee (CC) members, a po- litical body that comprises the top leaders of the Communist Party, are discouraged to enroll. In contrast, counties that are send-down movement destinations of CC members during Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) are more likely to enroll. We also find counties with lower cost, higher benefits, and more government revenue are more likely to enroll. Local government leaders may face trade-off between economic performance and social welfare, and connected officials have more incentives to allocate resources in economic growth rather than social welfare. These findings are characterized by a theoretical model that describes how connections change local leaders’ allocation of government resources under a multitask problem

Death is Merely a Comma: Immortality in the Cinema and Literature of Tadeusz Konwicki

Abstract This article examines the motifs of death and immortality in Polish film director and author Tadeusz Konwicki’s 1971 film Jak daleko stąd, jak blisko [How Far, How Near, 1971], and the 1979 novel Mała apokalipsa [A Minor Apocalypse]. In these works, Konwicki grapples with the idea of mortality—he both fixates on and does away with death. At the same time humorous and eerie visits from the other side undo death’s absolute power, even in those cases where it appears to have succeeded. While Konwicki’s earlier works had already began his foray into the topic, How Far, How Near marks a special moment in his oeuvre, one in which death becomes an unavoidable matter and yet its own opposite, eternal life. Furthermore, the release of How Far, How Near coincides with a political shift in Poland—Edward Gierek being installed as Party secretary with a consequent change in the metaphorical might of immortality in Polish political rhetoric. Konwicki’s “immortality” resides in the aesthetic realm during a period in which political rhetoric ceases to spare political leaders from death, How Far, How Near thus marks a new moment in Konwicki’s works, and it occurs during a new moment in Polish politics.

Promoting the polluters? The competing objectives of energy efficiency, pollutant emissions, and economic performance in Chinese municipalities

With the rapid development of China's economy, energy efficiency and pollutant emissions have also entered our horizons and become two big issues. To explore the impacts that these three factors have on the promotion probability of municipal party secretaries, we have collected the data of 810 municipal party secretaries with position changes in the period of 2005–2015 and mainly adopted the probit model to conduct our empirical tests. Our results are as follows: (1) Higher economic performance, higher energy efficiency and lower pollution emissions can significantly increase the promotion probability of municipal party secretaries; (2) these three correlations evolve differently, the impact of economic performance declines slightly but always predominates, the impact of pollutant emission tends to grow while that of energy efficiency continues to decrease. This research provides a dynamic understanding of Chinese local officials’ promotion incentive and their trade-off among economy, energy and environment, which would be a valuable supplement for Institution Change Theory and an important reference for other countries with similar developing dilemma.

Incentivizing Corruption: An Unintended Consequence of Bureaucratic Promotions in China

Conventional wisdom holds that in non-democracies, a strong central state can reward and punish local administrations through a merit-based promotion system, which should restrain corruption. But much evidence shows that rampant corruption coexists with powerful central governments. This study resolves this puzzle by incorporating bribes in a tournament model. Our model predicts that when bribes are more important than performance in superiors’ total gain, or if there is a lack of serious punishments for wrong-doing, or an increase in promotion gain, promotion can incentivize corruption. Using a fuzzy regression discontinuity design exploiting exogenous variations in officials’ likelihood of promotion from a mandatory age cutoff for bureaucratic promotion in China, combined with a unique biographical database of prefecture party secretaries and novel measures of corruption, we find that promotions encourage corruption in China. Moreover, prefecture party secretaries are more corrupt if their provincial superiors are connected to central factions, suggesting that upper-level factionalism is one of the disincentives that breaks down lower-level meritocracy.

Analyzing the factors influencing the choice of the government on leasing different types of land uses: Evidence from Shanghai of China

In this paper, the factors influencing the choice of the government on leasing different types of land uses in Shanghai of China are investigated. Based on the literatures and the interview with the officials of the Departments of Planning and Land Authority in Shanghai, some variables of the mathematical model for land leasing in Shanghai are presented. Then a multinomial logit model is proposed to estimate the probability and analyze the factors influencing the government on choosing different types of land uses. Based on the district-level data from 2003 to 2014, the regression results are obtained from the multinomial logit model. The results show that the area of land, the distance between the land and the city center, the distance between the land and the district center, real estate price, gross domestic product (GDP), paid-in foreign investment, tenure of party secretary of the district, promotion of district mayor to party secretary of the district, and industrial park have significant effects on the choice of the government on leasing land to different types of land uses in Shanghai. And the policy implications for land leasing in Shanghai are proposed.

The Impact of Political Purge on Political Decisionmaking: Political Selection Under Extreme Uncertainty

Scholars typically treat corruption crackdowns in authoritarian regimes as coup-proofing purges to eliminate rivals, but purges extending beyond top powerholders have broader impact than this logic implies. Wide-reaching purges grossly raise the cost of political error, thereby increasing risk reduction in decisionmaking throughout the system. We analyze decisions on political appointments before and during a massive corruption crackdown in China. We estimate the purge impact by analyzing 2013--2017 prefecture-year panel data on political turnover of communist party secretaries. We expect party bosses of these officials to reduce perceived career risk by biasing appointments against their own clients, to signal they are not building factions, with variation in bias reflecting heterogeneity in intensity of Beijing’s purges. We find the conditional effect of purge intensity on anti-client bias statistically significant and sizable during this great purge, but not in previous smaller-scale anticorruption crackdowns. This study contributes to knowledge about purges under authoritarianism.

Do networks or performance impact the promotion of Chinese officials? Evidence from prefecture‐level cities

AbstractThis study examines the effects of connections and economic performance on the promotion of Chinese city mayors. Our study differs from the published literature in four respects. First, this study covers a comprehensive data set, including 1,422 mayors from 284 prefecture‐level cities. The use of a large data set helps resolve mixed results of past studies. Second, we use a broader range of top leaders. Third, we apply a more comprehensive definition of connections than earlier studies. Finally, we examine the effects of the policy shift of the 11th 5‐year plan on promotion of mayors. Our results reveal that the performance of a city mayor assisted his/her promotion to party secretary before 2006 but not afterwards. However, a mayor's connection with five types of top leaders is helpful. Among the four types of connection, colleagueship is the most effective in expediting the promotion of mayors. Graduating from the same university and department is also helpful but to a lesser extent. Township connection is not useful.

Corruption as a natural resource curse: Evidence from the Chinese coal mining

Research on the natural resource curse has been extended to the impact of natural resource abundance/dependence on institutional or governance quality, which includes corruption. This study investigates the impact of coal mining on local corruption in China. The findings show a positive association between coal output and corruption at the prefectural Party Secretary's level. Using the spatial band of 200 km radius and 100 km radius of individual coalmines aggregated at prefecture level as an instrumental variable, we establish the causality running from coal output to local corruption. A robustness check using court verdicts of all bribery cases in China indicate the same result, i.e., coal mining is conducive to local corruption at all levels. Furthermore, we show that the mechanism is not through demand side, i.e., corruption is not a consequence of economic boom around the coalmines but directly linked to the coal mining itself.

City Administrative Level and Municipal Party Secretaries’ Promotion: Understanding the Logic of Shaping Political Elites in China

ABSTRACT This study focuses on the following important but often overlooked variable in studies investigating China’s cadre system: the city administrative level. Using a dataset covering Chinese municipal party secretaries from 2000 to 2017, this article finds that secretaries from sub-provincial cities are more likely to be promoted than those from prefecture-level cities. This result reveals that serving as a party secretary in sub-provincial cities may be a key step towards further promotion among those who become vice ministers at a young age. In addition, economic performance has a negligible effect on sub-provincial secretaries’ better promotion prospects, highlighting the existence of heterogeneity caused by the city administrative level in the promotion tournament.

Propaganda ‘Worth an Army’: The Norwegian Labour Party, Haakon Lie and the transnational dissemination of Cold War propaganda, 1945–55

The working class was the most important target for British and American propaganda in Norway during the early Cold War. The propagandists found eager allies in certain Norwegian Labour Party partisans, who wanted support in their struggle against communist and Soviet influence. Party Secretary Haakon Lie became their key contact. Soon after the war, he started propaganda cooperation with the British Labour Party, as well as the British and US Embassies in Oslo, mostly on his own initiative. New opportunities arose with the onset of the Cold War and the establishment of secret Western campaigns to influence public opinion abroad. From 1948 onward, anti-communist propaganda poured into Norway, reaching a peak during the Korean War. In the early 1950s the British Foreign Office, the US State Department and the CIA’s Congress for Cultural Freedom were all cooperating with the Norwegian Labour Party. This article gives an overview of the transnational dissemination of propaganda through Labour’s party and union apparatus, arguing that the Western propagandists’ remarkable reach towards the Norwegian labour movement and working class was a cultural ‘empire by invitation’.

Modernizing China's Tertiary Education Sector: Enhanced Autonomy or Governance in the Shadow of Hierarchy?

AbstractThe Chinese government has acknowledged that in order to turn Chinese universities into world class institutions, it will have to grant them a greater degree of autonomy. However, the reforms that have been introduced to achieve this goal run counter to a long tradition of central government oversight. The question now presenting itself is how much actual control government has devolved to universities. The qualitative evidence presented in this paper, obtained through interviews with university presidents and Party secretaries, not only confirms that, as one might expect, Chinese universities continue to operate “in the shadow of hierarchy,” but also and more importantly that formal efforts to devolve authority are being rendered ineffective by informal pressures and control mechanisms. Discussion reflects on the state of play in Chinese public administration studies, and urges public policy researchers examining devolution in China to account for both formal reforms and everyday “lived experiences.”

Party Secretaries at Private Institutions of Higher Education: Group Characteristics, Channels for Selection, and Policy Recommendations

Research on the group characteristics and channels for selection of party secretaries at private institutions of higher education has important significance in strengthening leadership by party organizations and perfecting internal governance structures at private institutions of higher education. A survey of 293 private institutions of higher education shows that, on the whole, party secretaries tend to be more advanced in age, with a fairly reasonable ratio of men and women, while their academic qualifications need improvement. The career trajectories of party secretaries display diversification, and their power is gradually expanding. The principal channels for selection of party secretaries include appointment by the educational affairs department of the party committee, or election by the school. In the future, a qualifications-based access system should be established for party secretaries at private institutions of higher education, and the selection system for party secretaries should be perfected, with accurate positioning of their roles, and correct handling of relationships with school operators and presidents, allowing secretaries to better exercise their roles as leaders, participants, supervisors and coordinators, so as to usher in safe, stable and standardized school development.

Environmental political business cycles: the case of PM2.5 air pollution in Chinese prefectures

Chinese local leaders’ behaviors are driven by a career incentive structure in which those delivering better performances are more likely to be promoted. Local leaders signal competence when their superiors actively collect evidence to evaluate their performances: these are years leading to the end of a five-year term. To create better economic performances, local leaders lessen the enforcement of environmental regulations to reduce local industries’ production costs and/or to attract firms from other jurisdictions. Such selective enforcement creates an environmental political business cycle in which pollution increases in years leading to the year of leader turnover. The empirical analysis on a panel of Chinese prefectures of 2002–2010 reveals a U-shaped relationship between a prefecture’s party secretary’s years in office and its average annual PM2.5 level.

Credit and Fiscal Multipliers in China

We estimate credit and fiscal multipliers in China, using subnational political cycles as a source of exogenous variation. The tenure of the provincial party secretary, interacted with the credit and fiscal expenditure used in other provinces, instruments for provincial credit and government expenditure growth. We find a fiscal multiplier of 0.75 in 2001-2008, which increased to 1.2 in 2010-2015, consistent with higher multipliers in a slower economy. At the same time, a credit multiplier of 0.2 in 2001-2008 declined to close to zero in 2010-2015, consistent with credit saturation and credit misallocation. Our results suggest that credit expansion cannot further support economic growth in China. The flip side is that lower credit growth is also unlikely to disrupt output growth. Fiscal policy is powerful, and can cushion the macroeconomic adjustment to lower credit intensity.

Political Uncertainty and Firm Investment: New Evidence from Chinese Listed Firms

Using hand-collected data on the turnover of mayor and party secretary in 260 Chinese cities, we study the effect of political uncertainty on firm investment. We find that political uncertainty has a negative impact on firm investment. Our baseline results show that firm investment declines when political leader is replaced and the effect of party secretary turnover on firm investment is stronger than that of mayor turnover. Our empirical analysis also demonstrates that: a) the frequency of political turnover is positively associated with the volatility of firm investment; b) state-owned firms significantly reduce investment when party secretary is replaced; c) firms invest less if the replacement of government officials is due to corruption. Lastly, our empirical results are robust to FE estimators and the exclusion of some influential observations.

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.

Busting the “Princelings”: The Campaign Against Corruption in China’s Primary Land Market*

Using data on over a million land transactions during 2004–2016 where local governments are the sole seller, we find that firms linked to members of China's supreme political elites—the Politburo—obtained a price discount ranging from 55.4% to 59.9% compared with those without the same connections. These firms also purchased slightly more land. In return, the provincial party secretaries who provided the discount to these “princeling” firms are 23.4% more likely to be promoted to positions of national leadership. To curb corruption, President Xi Jinping stepped up investigations and strengthened personnel control at the province level. Using a spatially matched sample (e.g., within a 500-meter radius), we find a reduction in corruption of between 42.6% and 31.5% in the provinces either targeted by the central inspection teams or whose party secretary was replaced by one appointed by Xi. Accordingly, this crackdown on corruption has also significantly reduced the promotional prospects of those local officials who rely on supplying a discount to get ahead.

Will Officials’ Turnover Affect Enterprises’ Financial Subsidies? An Empirical Research Based on Chinese Family Firms

With administrative decentralization and fiscal decentralization, local officials are in control of many important resources such as administrative examination and approval, land acquisition, loan guarantees, and policy preferences. In fact, they have become the main executors of regional economic development and social order stability. However, as far as the personnel system of cadres in our country is concerned, the turnover of local officials is a normal state. In addition, because of the differences of personal experiences and individual characteristics of different officials, their policy preferences in the term of office also exist greater heterogeneity, which leads to the fact that the replacement of officials will affect the operation of enterprises in varying degrees. As a kind of free transfer payment provided by the government to the main body of micro-economic activities, the financial subsidy is also the embodiment of the interaction between the government and enterprises. However, there are few scholars analyze whether the turnover of local officials will affect the acquisition of financial subsidies of enterprises. Based on the sample data of family listed companies from 2007 to 2014, this paper examines the influence of officials turnover on financial subsidies of family firms from the perspective of the turnover of party secretaries of prefecture-level cities. The main conclusions are as follows: First, to some extent, the replacement of officials will break the original relationship between the government and enterprises. Compared with state-owned enterprises, family firms are more vulnerable to the impact of such external shocks, the most direct reflection of which is the reduction of government subsidies. Second, there is a potential assumption that family firms use political connections to gain resource advantages, so they are more vulnerable to the break-up of the relationship between the government and enterprises, as the turnover of officials will affect financial subsidies of enterprises. At present, there are two views on the political relationship: the view of efficiency” and the view of rent-seeking”. The view of efficiency” holds that seeking the political relationship is the best choice for high-quality enterprises when the institutional environment is poor; while the view of rent-seeking” holds that the political connection is a means of rent-seeking, which cannot be regarded as the standard of judging high-quality enterprises, nor is it conducive to the improvement of economic and social efficiency of enterprises. This study finds that when officials are replaced, financial subsidies of politically affiliated enterprises are more affected, which indicates that the turnover of officials affects the access of rent-seeking enterprises to financial subsidies, and in the process, the rent-seeking” view of the political connection has been verified. Third, in the regions where the system efficiency is more perfect, the influence of the replacement of officials on financial subsidies of enterprises is weakened. Finally, the further study of this paper finds that when officials are from other provinces and cities, the break of the interest alliance caused by the turnover of officials has a more significant impact on financial subsidies of family firms. In addition, when the performance of enterprises is poor, the influence of officials’ turnover and political connections on financial subsidies of enterprises is more significant. This study has a certain theoretical contribution and practical significance. From the perspective of theoretical contributions, this paper not only expands the research field of the impact of officials’ turnover on enterprises, but also enriches the existing research on financial subsidies, institutional governance and the relationship between government and enterprises. From the perspective of practical significance, this paper believes that at the present stage of economic transformation in China, it is suggested that the current government performance appraisal system should be adjusted to a certain extent, and GDP should no longer be used as a single assessment index. On the contrary, the adjustment of the regional economic structure, the upgrading of the industrial structure, and the ability of regional innovation are more included in the official performance system, so as to guide local officials to allocate limited government subsidies to enterprises with good development prospects, strong innovative capacity, in line with the direction of national strategic development. In addition, market reforms should be further deepened, and institutionalized government subsidy standards should be formed, so that financial subsidies can also form market allocations, thereby maximizing the effectiveness of financial subsidies.

Corporate philanthropy in a politically uncertain environment: does it bring tangible benefits to a firm? Evidence from China

ABSTRACTWe examine the impact of political uncertainty on a firm’s corporate philanthropy (CP) contribution and the associated direct tangible benefits of CP to a firm. Specifically, we examine two testable hypotheses. (1) When facing political uncertainty, a firm makes more CP, and (2) after a firm makes CP contributions during a period of uncertainty, it will obtain future tangible benefits. Using a sample of Chinese listed firms, we document that a firm, on average, increases its CP significantly during a period of political uncertainty (e.g. when there is a new local communist party secretary or mayor). In addition, we report that, on average, a firm’s donation in year t is positively correlated with its amount of government subsidies, corporate income tax reduction, and short- and long-term bank loan amounts in year t + 1. The findings are robust compared to those of placebo tests and fixed effect models, as well as when using an alternative measure of political uncertainty. We observe that the results are more pronounced among non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs) than those among SOEs, corroborating the notion that during a period of political uncertainty, non-SOEs are more willing to build political connections with new city leaders through CP than are SOEs.