Bureaucratic Discretion versus Political Control under China's Nomenklatura

• In Event: Autocracy and Elites

Abstract

Extensive comparative studies have analyzed how politicians in democracies sometimes allow, yet at other times, limit bureaucrats’ discretion in policymaking, based on the formal institutions that manage competition among elite actors over policy priorities. In contrast, in single-party autocracies, where political elites ascend within a closed hierarchy of “Nomenklatura” – “party-control-cadres,” few studies have systematically examined how discretion would be delegated to and allocated within the bureaucracy. Nonetheless, I contend that the informal power structures governing intra-elite competition in single-party regimes can shape political elites’ strategic decisions to grant substantial discretionary power to subordinate bureaucrats.
This paper uses local governments in China as the case, and investigates when provincial leaders strategically allocate discretionary power among their city-level subordinates bureaucrats. Collecting government-issued policy documents and utilizing cutting-edge language models, I compare the specificity of the directives and regulations announced by provincial and city governments, within the same policy topic categorized. This approach enables the development of quantitative metrics to assess the degrees of policy discretion across various policies and different cities. My hypothesis posits that in scenarios of heightened intra-elite competition, political leaders strategically assign discretionary policymaking authority to subordinate bureaucrats within their factional networks. This strategy helps political leaders in single-party autocracies navigate the balance between delegating policy discretion and ensuring the political loyalty of subordinate bureaucratic elites.

Author

• Bo Feng, Boston University