The competence-loyalty tradeoff in China's political selection

Zhaoguang Wang, Yang Yao and Junni Zhang

Journal of Comparative Economics, 2022, vol. 50, issue 2, 369-393

Abstract: This paper studies the competence-loyalty tradeoff and its evolution in China's political system characterized by hierarchical selection. From the eyes of the central controllers, the rational selection rule is to mix competence and loyalty when officials are selected to fill lower-tier positions and to select from them the more loyal to fill higher-level positions. Measuring competence by an official's contribution to local economic growth and loyalty by his work experience (connection) with central leaders, our empirical analysis finds that ability strongly matters and connection weakly matters for city officials promoted to provincial positions, but only connection matters for provincial officials promoted to central positions. Moreover, ability matters more in the early years, and connection matters more in the later years.

Keywords: Political selection; Chinese political system; Competence-loyalty tradeoff (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H1 J4 P5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jcecon:v:50:y:2022:i:2:p:369-393

DOI: 10.1016/j.jce.2022.01.007

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