Social Ties and the Selection of China’s Political Elite

Raymond Fisman, Jing Shi, Yongxiang Wang () and Weixing Wu
Additional contact information
Jing Shi: RMIT
Yongxiang Wang: University of Southern California
Weixing Wu: University of International Business and Economics

No dp-322, Boston University - Department of Economics - The Institute for Economic Development Working Papers Series from Boston University - Department of Economics

Abstract: We study how sharing a hometown or college connection with an incumbent member of China’s Politburo affects a candidate’s likelihood of selection as a new member. In specifications that include fixed effects to absorb quality differences across cities and colleges, we find that hometown and college connections are each associated with 5-9 percentage point reductions in selection probability. This “connections penalty†is equally strong for retiring Politburo members, arguing against quota-based explanations, and it is much stronger for junior Politburo members, consistent with a role for intra-factional competition. We show that our findings differ sharply from earlier work both because of our more rigorous empirical specification as well as our emphasis on shared hometown and college – rather than shared workplace – connections.

Keywords: Social Ties; Political Connections; Political Elite; Politburo; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 P26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pages
Date: 2019-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna, nep-pol and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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