Landry Pierre F. Decentralized Authoritarianism in China: The Communist Party’s Control of Local Elites in the Post-Mao Era

Cambridge University Press, 2008. — 317 p.China, like many authoritarian regimes, struggles with the tension between the need to foster economic development by empowering local officials and the regime’s imperative to control them politically. Pierre F. Landry explores how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) manages local officials in order to meet these goals and perpetuate an unusually decentralized authoritarian regime.
Using unique data collected at the municipal, county, and village levels, Landry examines in detail how the promotion mechanisms for local cadres have allowed the CCP to reward officials for the development of their localities without weakening political control. His research shows that the CCP’s personnel management system is a key factor in explaining China’s enduring authoritarianism and proves convincingly that decentralization and authoritarianism can work hand in hand.
Pierre F. Landry is Associate Professor of Political Science at Yale University and a Research Fellow with the Research Center for Contemporary China at Peking University. He is an alumnus of the Hopkins-Nanjing program and taught in the Yale–Peking University joint undergraduate program in 2007. His research interests focus on Chinese politics, comparative local government, and quantitative comparative political analysis. His recent articles have appeared in Political Analysis and The China Quarterly.