IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/45826.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Decentralization and veiled corruption under China's "rule of mandates"

Author

Listed:
  • Birney, Mayling

Abstract

This paper shows why corruption is especially difficult to detect under China’s system of decentralized authoritarian rule, which I call a “rule of mandates.” Local officials must pursue high priority political targets but have immense discretion over which laws to implement. A relative standard for corruption consequently arises since non-implementation of laws may be mandate-serving or may be corrupt; and determining which requires extra information on why non-implementation occurred. The theory is supported by evidence from original survey and case research on the implementation of the village elections law. I discuss implications for anticorruption efforts, development patterns, and future research.

Suggested Citation

  • Birney, Mayling, 2014. "Decentralization and veiled corruption under China's "rule of mandates"," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 45826, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:45826
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/45826/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kong, Gaowen & Ji, Mianmian & Guo, Yuemei, 2021. "Political promotion events and energy conservation decisions: Evidence from China," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    2. Xinyu Fan & Feng Yang, 2019. "Strategic promotion, reputation, and responsiveness in bureaucratic hierarchies," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 31(3), pages 286-307, July.
    3. Ji, Mianmian & Lv, Wendai, 2022. "Demonstration zones reform and corporate philanthropy: Evidence from China," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    4. Shenghui Tong, 2022. "Corruption and anti‐corruption in China: a review and future research agenda," Asian-Pacific Economic Literature, The Crawford School, The Australian National University, vol. 36(1), pages 3-16, May.
    5. Ge Xin & Jia Chen, 2023. "Decentralized governance and collective action dilemma: Sub‐national governments' responses to COVID‐19 in China," Public Administration & Development, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 43(2), pages 163-175, May.
    6. Zhou, Wenwen & shi, Yu & Zhao, Tian & Cao, Ximeng & Li, Jialin, 2024. "Government regulation, horizontal coopetition, and low-carbon technology innovation: A tripartite evolutionary game analysis of government and homogeneous energy enterprises," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 184(C).
    7. Hong Gao & Adam Tyson & Guangxin Cheng, 2022. "Novel virus, novel response: Local discretion and responses to COVID‐19 in Hebei Province, China," Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 9(1), pages 5-22, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Asia; China; corruption; authoritarianism; decentralization; rule of law;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • B14 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought through 1925 - - - Socialist; Marxist
    • B24 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought since 1925 - - - Socialist; Marxist; Scraffian
    • P2 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist and Transition Economies
    • P3 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist Institutions and Their Transitions

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:45826. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.