Achieving political control and regional development : spatial mobility in the Chinese bureaucracy
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- The allocation of career opportunities to local officials has long been identified as a central strategy to promote conformity and discipline in authoritarian regimes. While previous studies of career mobility in authoritarian regimes mostly focus on the political incentives from position promotion, spatial mobility, as a crucial component of career mobility, is given little attention. Spatial mobility refers to the top-down process of transferring local officials across administrative jurisdictions. This dissertation advances the literature by examining the mechanisms, patterns, applications, and implications of spatial mobility in the contemporary Chinese bureaucracy, which provide an important lens through which to inspect the institutional logic of governance in this authoritarian regime, especially how it maintains a delicate balance between political control and regional development. Specifically, this dissertation consists of three inter-related studies. In the first study, I examine the dominant spatial mobility mechanisms in the Chinese bureaucracy. I propose that there are three dominant mechanisms: (1) mobility to reward bureaucrats, (2) mobility to train bureaucrats, and (3) mobility to achieve political control. The three mechanisms induce distinct mobility patterns at the aggregate level and have differential applications across top-administrative positions. In the second study, I focus on the implication of spatial mobility of local political leaders, i.e., the heads of local governments and party committees at the county-, prefectural-, and provincial jurisdictions. Specifically, I analyze how local political leaders' administrative ranks and jurisdictions of their immediate previous positions influence their promotion hazard in their current terms. Finally, in the third study, I examine how the different patterns of spatial mobility of local officials of different positions, particularly local political leaders and the more stable political elites, result in their different roles in promoting the local economy. This dissertation contributes to the comparative study of bureaucracy and, in particular, our understanding of the institutional logic underlying China's economic growth and political stability
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2019; ©2019 |
| Publication date | 2019; 2019 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Zhu, Ling, 1988- |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Zhou, Xueguang, 1959- |
| Thesis advisor | Zhou, Xueguang, 1959- |
| Thesis advisor | Powell, Walter W |
| Thesis advisor | Walder, Andrew G. (Andrew George), 1953- |
| Degree committee member | Powell, Walter W |
| Degree committee member | Walder, Andrew G. (Andrew George), 1953- |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Sociology. |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Ling Zhu |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Sociology |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2019 |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2019 by Ling Zhu
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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