Autonomy in Autocracy: Local Decentralization and Nation-State Building in Post-1949 China

Overview

In this book, I develop a new theory to explain how the designation of ethnic autonomous territories (EATs) has shaped the governance of subordinate non-Han ethnic groups and sustained the Party-state in post-1949 China. Combining statistical analysis, archival research, and elite interviews, I demonstrate that ethnic local autonomy was not introduced simply to defuse potential ethnic secessionism. Instead, ethnic autonomous prefectures and counties have allowed the Chinese central leader to constrain the discretion of potentially defiant provincial elites, which in turn addresses the dilemma of delegation, when they faced strong competitors within the Politburo.

Highlights

• I explain how ethnic local autonomy can act as an institution of agent control and contribute to nation-state building. I have also identified similar historical cases of state-building via local decentralization reforms in Ancient and Republican China.

• Drawing on an original dataset of Chinese political elites, I employ social network analysis and supervised machine learning to construct innovative quantitative indices of elite connectedness and the structural features of elite networks to examine the interplay of informal political ties and formal institutional changes.

• Using cross-national datasets, I demonstrate that institutions can bring about the co-optation of social groups that are not necessarily the most credible threats to autocratic survival. The autocrat can exploit ethnic differences to overcome the delegation dilemma in a multilevel government by introducing local decentralization in ethnic minority areas.

• While most studies have explored how local autonomy can contain ethnic conflicts, my research suggests that it can also avert the disintegration of multi-ethnic states by managing power struggles within the leader’s inner circle. Unpacking the political contexts that drive the introduction of ethnic local autonomy will help to clarify the mechanisms through which decentralisation can either mitigate or exacerbate inter-group tensions.

Awards and Nominations

• This book project has recently won a grant from Taiwan’s National Science and Technology Council as part of the highly competitive 2022 Taiwanese Overseas Pioneers (TOP) scheme. It was the only grant awarded to a political scientist on this occasion.

• My PhD dissertation was shortlisted for the Best Social Sciences Dissertation of the 2021 International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS) Book Prize for “deepening understandings of Chinese ethnic policy and suggesting new directions for the study of ethnic management and authoritarianism beyond China.”

• In 2020, UCLA nominated my dissertation for APSA’s William Anderson Award for the best doctoral dissertation in the field of federalism or intergovernmental relations, state, and local politics.