Embeddedness and Bureaucratic Compliance during China’s Anti-gang Crackdown

• In Event: State Actors and Public Goods Provision under Democracy and Authoritarianism

Abstract

Conventional wisdom assumes that an official’s local ties could weaken their loyalty to upper-level authorities and reduce their compliance with central policies. In this paper, we challenge this view and argue that, in a highly centralized bureaucracy, local ties could sometimes increase an official’s compliance and responsiveness during the implementation of high-priority policies. In a highly politicized context where adherence to a certain policy could impact an official’s perceived loyalty, preexisting local ties can incentivize them to make stronger efforts to avoid scrutiny and dispel suspicions of collusion. To test our theory, we use an original dataset from China’s National Crackdown on Gang Crimes, a three-year campaign (2018-2020) aimed at combating organized crimes and reducing collusion between local bureaucrats and gang members at the grassroots level. Our findings provide evidence that prefecture-city leaders with stronger connections to their assigned locality made greater efforts to prosecute organized crime members, driven by a stronger incentive to prove their loyalty and distance themselves from questionable social groups in the locality. Our research offers new insights into how local embeddedness impacts bureaucrats’ behavioral patterns and responsiveness in high-priority policy implementation.

Author

• Feng Tang, Tsinghua University