Abstract

This paper investigates, theoretically and empirically, factional arrangements within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the governing political party of the People's Republic of China. Our empirical analysis ranges from the end of the Deng Xiaoping era to the current Xi Jinping presidency and it covers the appointments of both national and provincial officials using detailed biographical information. We present a set of new empirical regularities within the CCP, including substantial leadership premia in the Politburo and Central Committee, intra-faction competition for promotions, and systematic patterns of cross-factional mixing at different levels of the political hierarchy. An organizational economic model suited to characterizing factional politics within single-party nondemocratic regimes rationalizes the data in-sample and displays excellent out-of-sample performance.

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Citation

Francois, Patrick, Kairong Xiao, and Francesco Trebbi. "Factions in Nondemocracies: Theory and Evidence from the Chinese Communist Party." Columbia Business School, December 17, 2017.

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