One or Two Heads? The Short-run Impacts of the Re-Centralization of Power in Rural China

Research in Progress seminar by Zihan Ye
Date
Thursday 15 Jun 2023, 13:00 - 14:00
Type
Seminar
Spoken Language
English
Room
room 4.39
Location
International Institute of Social Studies
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Dr Zihan Ye

In the Research in Progress seminar series, Dr Zihan Ye, visiting fellow at Erasmus University, will give a talk: One or Two Heads? The Short-run Impacts of the Re-Centralization of Power in Rural China.

 

Democratic institutions adopted by otherwise authoritarian regimes may vary in their effects on political and economic outcomes. The impact of giving such rights to citizens has been extensively studied but much less is known about the consequences of taking them away when the states seek to recentralize its power. Village autonomy of governance via elections in rural China, introduced in the 1980s, has eroded in the past two decades and the Communist Party has recently promoted a ‘one head’ policy since 2018 to further control this process. The two head system – a village chief and a party secretary – is being replaced by dual office-holding where the individual elected is simultaneously village chief and party secretary, entailing that all candidates are party affiliated and vetted.

The research focuses on how this policy impacted voting behaviors and political beliefs of affected villagers using a nationally representative survey and exploiting election timing to instrument for its introduction. Our results show that the turnout rate very strongly decreased in ‘one head’ villages, which we attribute to lowered election competition. This drop in democratic participation is however followed by improvements in villagers’ beliefs: lower corruption of local cadres and higher trust in local government.

Dual office-holding also leads to increased political accountability, especially in places with lower baseline democratic quality, higher congruence in interests, and stronger government capacity. The research results suggest that the reversal of democratic process via party influence in village elections in Rural China strongly reduced voters’ participation, without incurring any backlash in terms of citizen’s perception in the quality of institutions.

About the presenter

Dr Zihan Ye is currently visiting the Erasmus School of Economics for one and a half year as a post-doctoral researcher hosted by Professor Olivier Marie. His main research field lies in household finance, especially regarding the economic decisions made to facilitate old-age financial preparedness, and previous publications (in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization and the China Economic Review) focus on the economic consequences of subjective age identity. Zihan Ye is interested in using econometric methods to uncover the mysteries of the world and therefore is open to different kinds of empirical topics like the grassroots governance in the rural China as well as decision-making processes influenced by behavioral biases and institutional constraints.

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