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Ingroup Bias in Official Behavior: A National Field Experiment in China

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  • Distelhorst, Greg
  • Hou, Yue

Abstract

Do ingroup biases distort the behavior of public officials? Recent studies detect large ethnic biases in elite political behavior, but their case selection leaves open the possibility that bias obtains under relatively narrow historical and institutional conditions. We clarify these scope conditions by studying ingroup bias in the radically different political, historical, and ethnic environment of contemporary China. In a national field experiment, local officials were 33% less likely to provide assistance to citizens with ethnic Muslim names than to ethnically-unmarked peers. We find evidence consistent with the ingroup bias interpretation of this finding and detect little role for strategic incentives mediating this effect. This result demonstrates that neither legacies of institutionalized racism nor electoral politics are necessary to produce large ingroup biases in official behavior. It also suggests that ethnically motivated distortions to governance are more prevalent than previously documented.

Suggested Citation

  • Distelhorst, Greg & Hou, Yue, 2014. "Ingroup Bias in Official Behavior: A National Field Experiment in China," Quarterly Journal of Political Science, now publishers, vol. 9(2), pages 203-230, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:now:jlqjps:100.00013110
    DOI: 10.1561/100.00013110
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    Cited by:

    1. Kenneth Lowande & Andrew Proctor, 2020. "Bureaucratic Responsiveness to LGBT Americans," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 64(3), pages 664-681, July.
    2. Gaddis, S. Michael, 2018. "An Introduction to Audit Studies in the Social Sciences," SocArXiv e5hfc, Center for Open Science.
    3. Patricia Funjika & Rachel M. Gisselquist, 2020. "Social mobility and inequality between groups," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2020-12, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    4. Zhang, Zhe & Zhang, Xu & Putterman, Louis, 2019. "Trust and cooperation at a confluence of worlds: An experiment in Xinjiang, China," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 128-144.
    5. Young Bae & Byung-Deuk Woo & Sungwon Jung & Eunchae Lee & Jiin Lee & Mingu Lee & Haegyun Park, 2023. "The Relationship Between Government Response Speed and Sentiments of Public Complaints: Empirical Evidence From Big Data on Public Complaints in South Korea," SAGE Open, , vol. 13(2), pages 21582440231, April.
    6. Corrado Giulietti & Mirco Tonin & Michael Vlassopoulos, 2015. "Racial Discrimination in Local Public Services: A Field Experiment in the US," CESifo Working Paper Series 5537, CESifo.
    7. Patricia Funjika & Rachel M. Gisselquist, 2020. "Social mobility and inequality between groups," WIDER Working Paper Series wp2020-12, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    8. Michael Rochlitz & Evgeniya Mitrokhina & Irina Nizovkina, 2020. "Bureaucratic Discrimination in Electoral Authoritarian Regimes: Experimental Evidence from Russia," Bremen Papers on Economics & Innovation 2010, University of Bremen, Faculty of Business Studies and Economics.
    9. Weihua An & Adam N. Glynn, 2021. "Treatment Effect Deviation as an Alternative to Blinder–Oaxaca Decomposition for Studying Social Inequality," Sociological Methods & Research, , vol. 50(3), pages 1006-1033, August.
    10. Köhler, Ekkehard & Matsusaka, John G. & Wu, Yanhui, 2023. "Street-level responsiveness of city governments in China, Germany, and the United States," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 640-652.
    11. Nordvik, Frode Martin, 2022. "Inflation news and the poor: The role of ethnic heterogeneity," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 151(C).
    12. William Ascher, 2023. "Coping with the ambiguities of poverty-alleviation programs and policies: a policy sciences approach," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 56(2), pages 325-354, June.
    13. Adman, Per & Larsson Taghizadeh, Jonas, 2020. "Public officials’ treatment of minority clients," Working Paper Series 2020:12, IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy.

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