Local Governance under Xi Jinping

CSC International Research Webinar Series

Xi Jinping has been centralizing policymaking and supervision of local cadres beginning in 2016. Using survey data of 1,500 cadres from 28 provinces, we analyze the impact of these institutional changes on local cadres and find the ways in which local officials are adapting strategically, namely with cycles of paralysis followed by strict policy implementation and formalism (following procedures but not actively trying to improve outcomes). These strategic responses have significant implications for the quality of policymaking and the sustainability of these institutional changes.

About the speakers

Jessica C. Teets is a Professor at Middlebury College, Templeton Fellow for the Asia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI), and China Program Fellow at the Wilson Center. Her research focuses on governance in authoritarian regimes, especially the role of civic participation. She is the author of Civil Society Under Authoritarianism: The China Model (Cambridge University Press, 2014), editor (with William Hurst) of Local Governance Innovation in China: Experimentation, Diffusion, and Defiance (Routledge Contemporary China Series, 2014), and editor (with Max Grömping) of Lobbying the Autocrat: the Dynamics of Policy Advocacy in Nondemocracies (University of Michigan Press, 2023), in addition to articles published in The China Quarterly, World Politics, Governance, and the Journal of Contemporary China. Dr. Teets is currently working on a new book manuscript (with Dr. Xiang Gao) on changing governance under Xi Jinping, tentatively entitled Beyond Fragmented Authoritarianism, and administering the 4th wave of the Civic Participation in China survey.

David S G Goodman (Moderator) is Director of the China Studies Centre, University of Sydney, where he is Professor of Chinese Politics. He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia. Recent publications include: Local Governance in China: Structures, variations, and innovations Elgar 2023 (with Ceren Ergenc); Class and the Communist Party of China, 1921-2021 (2 Vols) (with Marc Blecher, Yingjie Guo, Jean-Louis Rocca, Tony Saich, and Beibei Tang) Routledge, 2022.