Provincial Party Research Articles

Officials' Social Networks and Local Indebtedness - A Study Based on Provincial Data

This paper takes the average annual growth of indebtedness of provincial party secretaries and the places where they serve from 2006 to 2017, and aims to investigate whether the social network of officials significantly affects the indebtedness of places. This paper adopts the linear regression method and establishes a unique evaluation system of officials' social networks. It is finally found that officials' social networks have a significant impact on the indebtedness of local governments. At the same time, the provincial officials' tenure, during which the growth of the indebtedness of other provincial governments also significantly affects the indebtedness of that provincial government.

IMPROVING THE QUALITY OF PARTY DEVELOPMENT AMONG STUDENTS IN DONG NAI PROVINCE

This article studies the reality of developing party members among students at universities and colleges in Dong Nai province. Reality shows that the Provincial Party Committee has always directed the development of Party members among students and has recorded positive results with effective implementation methods and models. However, developing party members among students also has limitations that need to be overcome; the rate of party members among students in Dong Nai currently needs to be more modest than the potential. The article proposes solutions to promote party development among university and college students in Dong Nai province. Keywords: Party membership development; student; Dong Nai province.

Choosing legislative candidates via primaries: The pivotal role of executive incumbency

How much influence does incumbency have on the way parties nominate candidates? I address this question in the context of Argentina, examining how political parties decide on candidate nomination methods for National Deputies. I argue that holding the governorship creates an imbalanced distribution of resources within a party, leading party factions to lean toward consensus in candidate selection and reducing the likelihood of choosing a primary election. Conversely, when a party lacks the governorship, its provincial party leader may have a weaker influence in deterring primary elections. I also theorize the various situations and resources governors can employ to discourage primary elections, including potential coattail effects, the option of seeking reelection, control over the primaries’ selectorate, and control of the electoral calendar. To test my expectations, I employ a regression discontinuity design, focusing on governors and those who finished as runners-up in lower chamber elections from 1985 to 2023. My findings reveal that governor incumbency decreases the probability of holding a primary election. I conduct further analyses by examining subgroups, considering the governor’s circumstances and the resources I previously theorized as factors influencing primary deterrence. I find that incumbency only deters primaries when the governor and National Deputies elections are concurrent, when the governor is not term-limited, and when they have control over the electorate and the electoral calendar.

探析依托现代化边境幸福村的旅游发展路径

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council have always attached great importance to the development of ethnic areas and the construction of border areas, supported the construction of ethnic and border areas, and promoted the process of revitalizing and enriching the people, stabilizing and consolidating borders. Since July 2021, when the Yunnan Provincial Party Committee and Government formulated and issued the “Yunnan Province Plan for Building Modern Border Comfortable Villages”, Yunnan border areas have actively implemented and promoted the construction of modern border comfortable villages to move towards the construction of modern border happy villages, taking into account the local actual situation. With the opening of the China Laos Railway, villages in China Laos border areas have become tourist destinations for domestic tourists, and tourism development has ushered in unprecedented opportunities and challenges. This article takes Shanggang Village, which was surveyed by the author in the field, as an example to conduct a preliminary analysis of the current situation of modern border happy village construction, tourism status, and tourism development paths in Shanggang Village. The aim is to provide certain reference and reference significance for the development of tourism based on the construction of modern border happy villages.

Limited Power-Sharing in a Personalized Regime: Xi Jinping’s Strategic Retreat from Local Politics

ABSTRACT In an authoritarian regime, the ruler faces a fundamental dilemma whereby the concentration of power increases the likelihood of subordinates distrusting the ruler. This study examines how Xi Jinping in China addresses this dilemma by sharing access-to-power positions with his central subordinates. By analyzing the promotion patterns of provincial officials from 1992 to 2021, this paper identifies Xi’s attempts to personalize provincial leadership by prioritizing his personal connections over conventional promotion criteria when selecting provincial party secretaries and governors. To mitigate the elite’s distrust resulting from this consolidation, Xi granted the Politburo Standing Committee (PSC) members influence over appointments for mid-ranking officials in provinces, such as provincial standing committee members. However, this power-sharing mechanism is limited as Xi Jinping grants these privileges exclusively to PSC members who have close ties with him, leaving those without such connections unable to cultivate patronage networks within provinces.

The birthplace cultural tightness of provincial party secretaries and innovation in their jurisdictions: Empirical evidence from 31 provinces in China

While the Chinese government has played an important role in China’s tremendous progress in innovation, and provincial party secretaries serve as the main body of regional management, less is known about how the key characteristics of these key leaders play a role in promoting innovation development. From the perspective of cultural tightness, we use patent data for 31 Chinese provinces from 2000 to 2019 to explore the impact of cultural tightness of provincial party secretaries’ birthplaces in influencing innovation in their jurisdictions. Drawing on upper echelons theory and imprinting theory, we find that party secretaries born in provinces with higher cultural tightness promote innovation more in their jurisdictions, but this effect is prominent only for incremental innovation, not for radical innovation. The potential underlying mechanism is that party secretaries with high birthplace cultural tightness (BCT) tend to invest more in infrastructure construction and thus enhance incremental innovation. In addition, the positive relationship between BCT of provincial party secretaries and the innovation in their jurisdictions is weaker when the jurisdiction is more market-oriented but becomes stronger as the tenure of the provincial party secretary increases. Theoretical contributions and managerial implications of these findings are discussed. JEL Classification: M0, M2

K slovenským národně‑emancipačním snahám na půdě Československé strany národně socialistické

This study investigates the establishment of the Czechoslovak National Socialist Party in Slovakia during the period of the First Czechoslovak Republic from 1918 to 1938. It examines the centralist approach employed by the party to manage the Slovak provincial organization, which eventually clashed with the predominantly nationalist-driven efforts of the Slovak party leadership. The tensions between the Czech and Slovak parts of the party arose due to the absence of a provincial party executive committee, a lack of programmatic theses that considered the specific needs of the region, unresolved issues of financing the party’s activities, and differing views on the political competences of the central and provincial party centres. These issues led to an internal party crisis in Slovakia in the mid-1930s, which was resolved by loosening the Slovak party organization’s ties to Prague

The impact of political competition on low-carbon technology innovation: From the perspective of officials’ personal characteristics

Political competition is reflected in the strategic interaction of regional government's behavioral motivation driven by “official tournament.” Especially since environmental protection was officially included in the official performance appraisal system in 2005, the interactive trend of local governments’ economic development and environmental protection is more obvious. The policy uncertainty caused by this interaction is a major challenge for the government to promote regional sustainable development. Different from previous studies that only focus on the impact of political competition on environmental governance, this paper studies the impact of political competition on the low-carbon technology innovation from the perspective of sustainable development. Combined with the characteristics of Provincial Party Secretaries and Provincial Governors, the influence mechanism of political competition on low-carbon technology innovation is analyzed based on the method of spatial dubin model. Firstly, it finds that political competition has a significant negative impact on low-carbon technology innovation in the region and its adjacent regions, which is mainly caused by the political competition of Provincial Governors, while the political competition of Provincial Party Secretaries has no significant impact on low-carbon technology innovation. Secondly, the results of the mediation effect test show that reducing the intensity of environmental regulation in exchange for economic growth and political promotion opportunities is one of the reasons why the political competition of Provincial Governors inhibits low-carbon technology innovation. Thirdly, the results of the heterogeneity test of official characteristics show that the age of Provincial Governors is less and the tenure is longer, the stronger the inhibiting effect of Provincial Governors’ political competition on low-carbon technology innovation is. These conclusions provide policy suggestions for enterprises to make environmental investment decisions under different political environments.

A lack of nostalgia: Hometown favoritism and allocation of intergovernmental transfer in China

We investigated hometown favoritism among senior provincial officials (SPOs) in China. SPOs include all officials with a vice-governor rank or above in provincial party standing committees and provincial governments. Using a new comprehensive panel of 2381 SPOs, we found that an increase in the number of SPOs born in a city does not increase the fiscal transfers received by the city and does not promote local economic growth. We argue that the absence of hometown favoritism results from the Chinese style of upward-accountability regime, in which provincial officials do not need to please residents in return for votes.

Promotion incentives, tenure uncertainty, and local government debt risk

In this paper, we investigate how officials’ promotion incentives and tenure uncertainty affect the local government debt risks in China. We find that the promotion incentives of officials could increase the local government debt risk, but there is no direct relationship with explicit local debt risk. There is a significant U-shaped relationship between officials’ promotion incentives and local government debt size as tenure uncertainty increases. Our results remain robust after replacing the explanatory variables and endogeneity tests. Furthermore, local government debt risk is more likely to be affected by promotion incentives and tenure uncertainty when local officials have been promoted or work in eastern China. The influence of province governors on local debt risk is more relevant than that of provincial party secretaries.

Does Environmental Policy with Veto Power Lead to Heterogeneous Emission? Evidence from China

Under the high-powered target responsibility system since 2007, with newly added environmental criterion, this study seeks to examine the effectiveness of the target-based performance assessment as an accelerator for local officials to be “greener”. This coercive environmental policy incorporates a stringent “one-vote” veto criterion for cadre promotion, meaning that officials who exceed emissions standards will not be promoted, no matter how outstanding their other performances are. Based on a panel data of 106 observations of provincial party secretaries from 31 provinces, this study examines how the target assessment intervenes in pollutant emissions through a new career incentive mode in China, and the conclusions are as follows: (1) Usually, provincial officials with higher political promotion incentives are characterized as a younger, lower-position cadre during the pre-stage of term, and tend to take GDP growth goals as a priority while treating environmental targets negatively. (2) Target assessment moderates the relationship between officials’ position and SO2 emission. The use of a one-vote veto in environmental pollution assessments has led to a shift of incentive structure, as political actors prioritize environmental protection as a means of increasing their chances of promotion. (3) The moderating effect of target assessment is heterogeneous, being significant only when officials are below 60 or before the third year of their term. This study sheds light on the previously opaque motivations behind green behaviors among officials, and provides empirical support for China’s transition from a GDP-based assessment system to a green GDP-based promotion model.

Campaign-style Personnel Management: Task Responsiveness and Selective Delocalization during China's Anti-corruption Crackdown, 2013–2020

AbstractThe anti-corruption campaign launched by General Secretary Xi Jinping has been one of the most far-reaching bureaucratic overhauls in modern Chinese history. How has Xi's crackdown on corruption shaped bureaucratic selection at the sub-provincial level? In this paper, we find that the purge has influenced how local ties are weighed in the appointment of prefecture city leaders. While it is common for provincial Party chiefs to appoint locally embedded officials to govern localities without high-profile corruption cases, they tend to appoint outside officials without local experience and connections to manage cities whose ex-leaders have recently been prosecuted for corruption. We argue that the provincial leaders’ objective of installing non-local officials is to exert hierarchical control and oversight in localities affected by corruption. Using an original dataset of all Party secretaries from China's 287 prefecture-level cities between 2013 and 2020, we find a significant divergence in the local embeddedness of officials who are appointed to replace corrupt ex-leaders and the embeddedness of those who fill the vacancies of transferred or retired predecessors. Our study sheds light on how Xi's anti-corruption campaign has reshaped the central–local relations and the logic of political control in China.

Political cycle and effective corporate tax rate: evidence from China

ABSTRACT This research aims to investigate the changing of effective corporate tax rate during the political cycle of Provincial Party Congresses with the data from Chinese industrial businesses from 1998 to 2009. The study shows that the effective tax rate for enterprises fluctuates with the political cycle of Provincial Party Congresses. The effective tax rate, in particular, tends to rise in the year before and during the Provincial Party Congresses, then decline year after year. Further study reveals variation in the impact of political cycles on officials and enterprises with various characteristics; for example, the impact of the corporation effective tax rate is more obvious for male officials, private firms, and so on. At the same time, the paper does not find a significant age ‘ceiling effect’ among prefecture-level officials in China. And the regional rule of law construction does not have a significant effect on the political cyclicality of corporate effective tax rates, whereas the political cyclicality of effective corporate tax rates is more pronounced in regions with higher government investment intensity. Finally, this paper puts forward policy recommendations such as improving officials’ promotion and assessment mechanisms and optimizing the government’s policy implementation.

The Foundation of Coalition avenir Québec and Québec party politics in the second half of the 2010s - early 2020s

The article deals with the main trends in the Quebec provincial party politics in the second half of the 2010s – early 2020s. It shows the emergence and formation of the Coalition avenir Québec party along with the specificity of its ideology. It also analyses the changes in the balance of power in the provincial politics after the 2018 elections in National Assembly. Special attention is given to the attempts to reform the electoral system of Quebec. The author concludes that new long-term trends have appeared in provincial politics.

Structure of Local Political Power and Family Firms’ Concentration of Wealth

Wealth concentration is a common problem worldwide, and research reveals that wealth is most concentrated in family firm holdings. We examined the influence of local political structure on the concentration of family firm wealth and found that (a) changes in de jure political power (provincial party secretary turnover) temporarily inhibit family firm wealth concentration, (b) local de facto power offers strong countervailing protection against this effect, and (c) there is a U-shaped relationship between the tenure of the provincial party secretary and wealth concentration. This investigation deepens our understanding of the relationship between family firm political connections and wealth concentration.

Research on Wenzhou to Further Increase R&D Investment to Stimulate the Vitality of Scientific Research and Innovation

Scientific and technological innovation is the effective accelerator of economic development, and research and development gives scientific and technological innovation vigorous vitality. In recent years, the state, provincial and municipal governments have introduced many policies to support enterprise R&D. For example, the Central Economic Work Conference has put forward the science and technology policy as a part of the seven combined policies, highlighting the importance of self-reliance and self-improvement of high-level science and technology. Zhejiang Provincial Party Congress takes "innovation to win" as the first of the five work directions, and fully shifts into the innovation-driven development mode; Wenzhou Municipal Party Committee and Municipal government regard "innovation enabling" as one of the "seven actions" for steady progress and quality improvement.

Study a model to evaluate the leadership capacity of young business leaders in Quang Binh province

The objective of this study is to study a model to evaluate the leadership capacity of young business leaders in Quang Binh province. Through primary and secondary data collection methods and expert methods, the article assessed the current situation of developing young enterprises in Quang Binh, and at the same time identified the necessity of criteria for assessing leadership capacity of young business leaders in Quang Binh province, thereby proposing the attitude-skill-knowledge (ASK) model for assessing the capacity of young business leaders in Quang Binh province. The proposed ASK - LOYQB (Leader of young business in Quang Binh) model includes 27 criteria, in which creativity criteria (quality groups), knowledge criteria on leadership, business management (knowledge groups), decision-making skills criteria, the criteria of relationship-building skills, and the criteria of listening skills (skill groups) are the most necessary criteria to evaluate the leadership capacity of young business leaders in Quang Binh province. This research is an important basis to improve the quality of human resources of enterprises, entrepreneurs, and start-up, contributing to the successful implementation of the resolution of the Quang Binh Provincial Party Congress, session XVII, term 2020-2025.

Provincial Apparatchiks as Investment Supervisors: The Polish Economic Boom of the Early 1970s

In Poland the early 1970s were characterised by a huge number of investments in industry, infrastructure and housing. An important role in the supervision of these projects was played by the leaders of provincial party committees. This study examines the documents of four provincial party committees in the years 1971–1974. The results show that apparatchiks’ strategies differed, depending on whether the provincial party leadership was strong or weak. The study suggests that the active party supervision resulted in extra costs for enterprises (such as producing reports for committees or organisation of special meetings with party supervisors), although the support of apparatchiks could help in raising funds.

The Formation, Connotation and Value of the Spirit of Bijie Experimental Area

Bijie Experimental Area is a national-level experimental area. Its establishment stems from the "three major problems" arising from the karst landform in Bijie, the original intention and mission of the Communist Party of China, the mission of the national united front to focus on the center and serve the overall situation, the strong promotion of the Guizhou Provincial Party Committee and the Provincial Government, and the unremitting efforts of the cadres and masses of Bijie. In the process of continuous exploration around the three major themes of "development and poverty alleviation, ecological construction and population control", the people of Bijie Pilot Area have formed the spirit of Bijie Pilot Area of "deepening reform, innovating with determination, working hard, and tackling difficulties with one heart" . The spirit of the Bijie Pilot Zone enriches the national spirit with patriotism as the core and the spirit of the times with reform and innovation as the core, provides a practical platform for the united front to help the development of the Bijie Pilot Zone, provides spiritual power for promoting poverty alleviation and linking rural revitalization, provides a source of power for the construction and implementation of a new development concept demonstration zone, and provides a source of power for the construction of Bijie as the "Golden Triangle" of Guizhou.

Party Politics and Public Goods in a Racially Divided Space: A Study of Community Policing in Hout Bay, South Africa

ABSTRACT This paper explores the political and historical roots of collective action problems around community policing in Hout Bay, South Africa. Utilizing a social capital approach, it argues that party politics has exacerbated a racialized politics of public goods provision in the community, with implications for the local governance of security. Using original data from semi-structured interviews and secondary sources, the paper analyzes the community’s environment of social capital, the influence of local and provincial party agendas on inter-group relations there, and its ultimate impact on community policing in Hout Bay.