Behavioral Traits and Political Selection in Authoritarian
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Behavioral Traits and Political Selection in Authoritarian Ruling Parties: Evidence from the Chinese Communist Party by Fengming Lu Department of Political Science Duke University Date: Approved: Edmund Malesky, Supervisor Herbert Kitschelt Melanie Manion Pablo Beramendi Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Political Science in the Graduate School of Duke University 2018 ABSTRACT Behavioral Traits and Political Selection in Authoritarian Ruling Parties: Evidence from the Chinese Communist Party by Fengming Lu Department of Political Science Duke University Date: Approved: Edmund Malesky, Supervisor Herbert Kitschelt Melanie Manion Pablo Beramendi An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Political Science in the Graduate School of Duke University 2018 Copyright c 2018 by Fengming Lu All rights reserved Abstract This dissertation investigates the role of behavioral factors in the personnel selection in authoritarian ruling parties. First, I argue that authoritarian ruling parties increase the weight of dispositional and behavioral criteria in personnel selection as a response to structural changes. Namely, the reasons behind this shift are that an authoritarian ruling party faces similar problems in personnel selection (such as heterogeneities in agents’ tasks and the multitask problem) and the party can no longer observe members’ and cadres’ loyalty based on a single indicator. Subsequently, I argue that risk attitudes, a key dispositional concept in applied psychology and behavioral politics, explain cadres’ propensities to engage in policy innovation and their obedience to the party leadership’s authority and orders. I further examine two mechanisms that might explain the relationship between risk attitudes and obedience, namely sensation-seeking and loss aversion. Finally, I contend that authoritarian ruling parties employ a diversified strategy of personnel selection when they assign cadres to different offices. To test the arguments, the author employs a mixed-method approach and utilizes archival evidence, original cadre survey experiments, original survey data, and interviews in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the largest authoritarian ruling party in the world. iv Contents Abstract iv List of Tables ix List of Figures x Acknowledgements xi 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Key Concepts in the Dissertation . .6 1.1.1 Regime Loyalty . .7 1.1.2 Organizational Loyalty and Obedience . .7 1.1.3 Risk Attitudes and Risk Aversion . .8 1.2 The Main Arguments of the Dissertation . .9 1.3 The Research Design of the Dissertation . 12 1.3.1 The Archival Research . 12 1.3.2 The Original Cadre Survey and Survey Experiments . 13 1.3.3 Interviews . 15 1.4 The Plan of the Dissertation . 16 2 Dispositional Factors in Authoritarian Ruling Parties - the Chi- nese Communist Party after 1949 18 v 2.1 Similarities between Single-party Regimes and Corporations in Person- nel Management . 21 2.2 Problems of Personnel Management in Authoritarian Ruling Parties . 23 2.3 Why Behavioral Traits in Personnel Selection Matter . 28 2.3.1 Problems of Objective Performance Measures . 28 2.3.2 Why Behavioral Measures Matter . 30 2.3.3 Subjective Performance Measures from Different Sources . 34 2.4 The Case of the CCP: Evolution of Multi-source Subjective Performance Measures . 36 2.4.1 The Multitask Problem . 39 2.4.2 The Declining Validity of Traditional Loyalty Indicators . 41 2.4.3 Organizational Loyalty and Obedience . 46 2.4.4 How Selection Works . 50 2.4.5 When the Problems of Multitask and Regime Loyalty Are Absent 52 2.5 Conclusion . 56 3 Risk Attitudes and Obedience 58 3.1 How Risk Attitudes Interact with Party Institutions . 62 3.1.1 Why Is Obedience Critical in Authoritarian Ruling Parties? . 62 3.1.2 Risk Attitudes and Subjective Perceptions of Risks . 71 3.1.3 Conceptualizing Risk Attitudes and Obedience . 75 3.1.4 Hypothesis . 80 3.2 Data and Measurements . 80 3.2.1 The Party Cadre Survey . 80 3.2.2 Measures of Risk Orientations . 81 3.2.3 Measures of Obedience: An Endorsement Experiment . 84 vi 3.2.4 The Baseline Specification . 87 3.3 Empirical Results . 88 3.3.1 Baseline Results . 88 3.3.2 Robustness Checks . 91 3.4 Identifying the Mechanism . 97 3.4.1 The Two Potential Mechanisms: Sensation-Seeking vs. Loss Aversion . 97 3.4.2 Hypotheses . 100 3.4.3 The Survey Experiment . 100 3.4.4 Specification . 102 3.4.5 Results . 103 3.4.6 Diagnostics . 105 3.5 Conclusion . 106 4 Assignment and Distribution of Party Cadres with Different Risk Orientations 108 4.1 Risk Attitudes and Occupational Assignments . 112 4.1.1 The Multitask Problem across Organizational Divisions . 113 4.1.2 The Weight of Organizational Loyalty . 117 4.1.3 Hypothesis . 120 4.2 The Cadre Survey and the Distribution of Cadres with Different Risk Orientations . 120 4.2.1 The Cadre Survey . 120 4.2.2 Categorization and Coding of Cadres’ Offices . 121 4.3 Empirical Results . 122 4.3.1 Baseline Results . 122 vii 4.3.2 A Narrow Sense of Party Generalists? . 124 4.3.3 Alternative Explanations . 126 4.3.4 Results with Matched Samples . 130 4.4 Conclusion . 132 5 Conclusion 136 5.1 Further Implications . 139 Appendices 142 Appendix A: The Interview Protocol . 142 Appendix B: Official Documents Cited . 143 Appendix C: Survey Designs . 146 Bibliography 148 Biography 165 viii List of Tables 3.1 Logistic estimates of the endorsement experiments. 89 3.2 Probit estimates of the endorsement experiments. 93 3.3 Logistic estimates of the endorsement experiments. All non-party members are dropped. 94 3.4 Logistic estimates based on two subsamples: respondents from coastal provinces and those from inland provinces. 96 3.5 Effects of the Punishment message and the Reward message on responses to the endorsement experiments. 104 4.1 OLS Results: Risk attitudes across different segments of the regime . 123 4.2 OLS Results: Risk attitudes across different segments of the regime with a narrower definition of party generalists . 125 4.3 OLS estimates with a subsample of cadres who have been assigned by the party to a different office in their careers. 127 4.4 OLS estimates with a subsample of cadres who have been assigned by the party to a different office in their careers. Years in current office controlled. 128 4.5 OLS results: risk attitudes across different segments of the regime with matched samples . 131 ix List of Figures 2.1 The shifting demographic pattern of prefecture-level CCP leaders, be- fore, during, and after the Cultural Revolution (1964 and 1972-1979). 42 2.2 Compositions of cadre cohorts, 1989-1998. 44 3.1 Marginal effects estimates from model 2, 4, and 6, and the binning estimators (red dots) . 92 3.2 Marginal effects estimates from model 2, 4, and 6, and the binning estimators (red dots) . 105 x Acknowledgements Growing up under the rule of a single-party regime, I have been long fascinated by secrets behind the cohesion and resilience of authoritarian ruling parties. For mentoring me how to tackle analytical and empirical challenges in understanding these secrets, I owe an immense intellectual debt to my main advisor Eddy Malesky, who has both set a very high standard for academic research and encouraged me in every critical occasion of my professional development. Herbert Kitschelt has encouraged my research on authoritarian ruling parties and provided valuable guidance since my very first day at Duke. Melanie Manion and Pablo Beramendi have offered valuable suggestions and comments from the beginning of the writing process. All of them have always pushed me out of the comfort zone and help me improve the weakest parts of my research. I am also extremely grateful to Milan Svolik, whose insightful works and teaching on authoritarian politics have inspired me since my days at the University of Illinois. Many friends and colleagues have offered generous help to my fieldwork research. Yanqing Ding, Tianguang Meng, Xiaoyang Ye, and Xiaojin Zhang played critical roles in arranging opportunities for fieldwork and interviews. Without Xufeng Zhu’s generous help, it would be impossible to conduct a series of cadre surveys in China. Mingxing Liu provided insightful comments at the early stage of my dissertation research. I would also like to thank the Harvard-Yenching Library and Sharon Li- xi Shiuan Yang, the librarian for public services and e-resources at the Harvard-Yenching Library. I would not be able to access the rarely used archives about organizational affairs in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) without their help. He Mingshuai, Du Juan, and Zhang Zhiyuan have provided valuable research assistance during the course of the cadre survey. I am also lucky to have a group of friends and colleagues at and outside Duke who have helped me through the past few years. Jared Daugherty, Bill Keech, and Georg Vanburg have read my works and provided valuable comments. I am also thankful to Xiao Ma, Aslı Cansunar, Haohan Chen, Chao-Yo Cheng, Cindy Cheng, Anh Do, Idil Edes, Qiang Guo, Yue Hou, David Kearney, Anh Le, Sophie Jiseon Lee, Josh Lerner, Li Kunrui, Zeren Li, Antong Liu, Chuyu Liu, Hanzhang Liu, Lizhi Liu, Steve Morgan, Soomin Oh, Vicky Paniagua, Undes, Jan Vogler, Austin Horng-En Wang, Haixiao Wang, Yan Wang, Simon Weschle, and Changdong Zhang for their help through the ups and downs. My research received generous financial supports from the Doctoral Fellowship from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange, the National Science Foundation Dissertation Improvement Grant (1746895), the Graduate School of Duke University, and the Asian/Pacific Studies Institute at Duke University. I would like to express my gratitude to these financial supports that makes this research project possible.