Control, Discretion and Bargaining: the Politics of Provincial Leader Rotation in China

Abstract

Using the case of China, this paper illustrates how single-party regimes utilize personnel power to manage the strained relationship between the central and subnational governments. After explaining the sources of central–local tension in the reform-period China, I present descriptive statistics to show how the center stepped up the rotation of provincial leaders as an instrument of centralized political control. Departing from existing studies that see the selective appointment of outsiders as a strategy to tightly control unruly provinces, I argue that the center’s decisions are also conditioned by the imperative to grant provincial discretion essential for local economic development and by the bargaining element inherent in the decision-making process. The relevant hypotheses are tested on an original dataset of provincial leaders. Uncovering the logic of provincial leader rotation is not only important for understanding the evolving balance of power between China’s center and provinces but also have profound policy implications.