Deliberation in Chinese and Indian Central Planning Bureaucracies
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DELIBERATION IN CHINESE AND INDIAN CENTRAL PLANNING BUREAUCRACIES A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Ishan Joshi January 2011 ⃝c 2011 Ishan Joshi ALL RIGHTS RESERVED DELIBERATION IN CHINESE AND INDIAN CENTRAL PLANNING BUREAUCRACIES Ishan Joshi, Ph.D. Cornell University 2011 This dissertation offers a different interpretation of the causes for the suc- cessful rapid growth of the Chinese and Indian economies in the contempo- rary period by placing both cases in the same analytic framework. Guided by formal game-theoretic models of information exchange, the historical analytic narratives document how the development and subsequent transformation of these two economies was managed under the auspices of their respective Cen- tral Planning Commissions. I first re-examine the developmental period, beginning in the early 1950s, when both nations inaugurated their Soviet-inspired central planning appara- tus. While traditional treatments of such planning emphasize its poorly realized economic goals, I focus on how planners established bureaucratic institutions of deliberation and information flow from the regions to the center. These in- formation flows allowed the central government in both of these countries to better coordinate domestic economic policy through the procedural infrastruc- ture erected by these mechanisms. In China and India, the organization of the Central Planning bureaucracy solved a coordination dilemma across regional interests. This allowed for the generation and evolution of a national consensus on fundamental questions of how the economy should grow: in what direction? With what goals? With what speed? Establishing what priorities? And, realized at what cost? These difficult questions were funneled through the discussions behind the annual and longer term Five Year Plans so that leadership from dif- ferent regions could effectively coordinate their preferences on these matters of vital national interest. I then extend the framework and analysis into the contemporary period of economic liberalization. Although these two regimes differ on almost all of the formal features of their polities, they have both successfully liberalized their closed economies without significant political opposition. In fact both nations have witnessed the evolution of a broad-based national consensus in favor of the reforms. I argue that this transition was made possible since it occurred at the behest of the enduring institutions of deliberation within their central planning hierarchies, which not only established the foundations for rapid contemporary growth, but continue to manage this change even as the old levers of planning and central command have all but evaporated from the scene. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Ishan Joshi was born in Pune, India and moved at a very early age to San Jose, California. He grew up in India and the Bay Area, as his family moved back and forth between San Jose and Pune. His academic interests lie in Asian cultures, languages, and civilizations, as well as in the analytical study of government and politics. He specializes in Chinese and Indian affairs. iii I dedicate this dissertation to my father. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to my dissertation committee members for their support in com- pleting this project. Professor Mary F. Katzenstein, the Chair of my Special Com- mittee, has been a friend and mentor since the first day I arrived in Ithaca, and her sage advice and guidance have sustained this project throughout. Profes- sor Thomas P. Lyons first instructed me on the workings of the Chinese econ- omy, and his course on planning and development in China was a primary in- spiration for this dissertation. Without Professor Walter R. Mebane, Jr., I sim- ply would not know how to think clearly and analytically about political sci- ence. I also thank Prof. Kevin Morrison for joining my defense committee as I completed this project, and to Prof. Christopher Way for serving as its out- side reader. The blame for errors and omissions that remain in this dissertation should be placed on the author alone. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Biographical Sketch . iii Dedication . iv Acknowledgements . v Table of Contents . vi List of Tables . ix List of Figures . x 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Economic Liberalization Without Political Opposition . 1 1.2 Overall Argument . 5 1.3 Independent Measures . 6 1.4 Dependent Measures . 10 1.5 Causal Mechanism . 13 1.6 Methodological Approach: Case Selection and Research Design . 16 1.7 Related Approaches to the Puzzle . 23 1.8 A Summary of the Chapters . 31 2 Planning and Coordination in China and India: A Theoretical and His- torical Overview 50 2.1 Approach and Argument . 50 2.1.1 Theoretical Overview . 52 2.1.2 Making Planning Fit Constraints . 54 2.1.3 Related Studies of Planning . 56 2.2 The Decision to Centralize: Regional Economies in Search of a Central Planner . 60 2.3 How did History Help Shape Expectations? . 68 2.4 Experiments with Decentralization: Coordination Against Con- straints . 81 2.4.1 Redefining the “Problem of the Planner” . 107 3 Deliberation and Policy Making in Bureaucracies 114 3.1 Introduction . 114 3.1.1 Argument . 117 3.2 Deliberation in the abstract . 121 3.3 Deliberation in Bureaucracies: An understudied phenomenon . 131 3.4 Deliberation in Chinese and Indian Planning Bureaucracies . 138 3.4.1 Administrative law and policymaking . 139 3.4.2 Scale Constraints: Information bottlenecks . 143 3.4.3 The Search for Consensus: The Aligning of Preferences . 146 3.4.4 Information Aggregation: Lobbying and Veto Power . 152 3.4.5 Local Level Deliberation . 156 3.5 Conclusion . 159 vi 3.5.1 Differences with existing studies on Chinese and Indian Bureaucratic Organization . 166 4 Consensus Deliberation and Divided Leadership 175 4.1 Introduction: The Need for a Unifying Framework . 175 4.1.1 Model: Consensus Deliberation . 181 4.1.2 Game Theory: Deliberation and Cheap Talk . 185 4.2 Model: Leadership Unity and Consensus Deliberation . 189 4.2.1 Stages of Play . 193 4.3 Discussion: An Interpretation of Four Scenarios . 222 4.3.1 Endogenous amounts of Allowable Bias . 222 4.3.2 Single-agent Deliberation . 225 4.3.3 Divided Leadership and Double-Agent Deliberation . 225 4.3.4 The Central Planner’s Correlated Strategy . 227 5 Divided Leadership, Deliberation and Pre-reform Planning 230 Analytic Narrative I: Applying the Model To Pre-Reform China and India ................................... 230 China: From Maoist Ascendancy to Wenhua Da Geming (Cultural Revolution) . 231 India: From Nehru to Indira Gandhi’s Emergency .......... 244 The Cultural Revolution and the Emergency . 255 Concluding Remarks . 262 6 Divided Leadership, Deliberation and Reforming the Economy through Planning 270 Analytic Narrative II: The Early Period of Economic Reforms ...... 270 Leadership Division and the Governmental logic of Planning . 274 India: From Left to Right—Evolving Consensus in the 1990s . 279 Post Maoist China: From Ideology to Consensus . 292 Concluding Remarks . 302 The Value of Leadership . 304 7 Institutional Selection Under Economic Liberalization 308 7.1 Introduction: A Commitment to Liberalize through Planning . 308 7.2 Studying Economic Reforms: A Mechanism Design Approach . 311 7.2.1 Screening versus Signaling . 313 7.2.2 A Framework with Two Scenarios . 315 Analytic Narrative III: Gradualism and the Search for Consensus in the First Phases of Reforms ......................... 327 Restructuring Planning Functions . 330 Reducing the Immobility of Factors . 338 Some Comparative Comments . 349 Conclusions . 355 vii 8 Conclusion 356 Works Cited 363 viii LIST OF TABLES 2.1 Initial Conditions ............................. 104 2.2 Major Macroeconomic Management Strategies in the Planned Periods .... 104 2.3 Major Reforms Initiated .......................... 104 2.4 India: Central Planning Objectives and Administration before Reforms 105 2.5 China: Central Planning Objectives and Administration before Reforms 106 4.1 A list of variables and parameters used ................. 190 ix LIST OF FIGURES 2.1 The Problem of Coordination with Network Externalities . 61 3.1 Local Level Deliberation in the Indian Plan . 160 3.2 Formulation and Implementation of Central Planning in India . 161 3.3 Formulation and Implementation of Central Planning in China . 162 4.1 Game Tree: Single Agent and Consensus Deliberation . 192 4.2 Policy Shifts: Retrenchment and Expansion . 194 4.3 Leadership Effect on proposed policy: pi............... 199 4.4 Leadership Effect on allowable discretion to Agent: bˆ....... 200 4.5 Reporting Stage Equilibrium with Single-Agent Deliberation . 211 4.7 Reporting Stage Equilibrium with Consensus Deliberation . 214 4.6 Diverging Preferences between Two Agents: Three values of γ.. 215 4.8 Payoffs for Pure Strategies at the Leadership Stage . 218 4.9 Payoffs for Normalized Pure Strategies at the Leadership Stage for an Expansionary Policy Shift ........................ 221 4.10 An Interpretation of Four Scenarios. 222 7.1 Institutional Selection Under Economic Reforms . 318 x CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Economic Liberalization Without Political Opposition After some twenty-plus years of sustained economic liberalization, in which China and India have made a turn from internal, self-sustaining, anti-foreign trade, autarkic, and financially insulated economic regimes to gradually more open, more free trading, and more openly competitive ones, certain striking