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Series:   Elements in Politics and Society in East Asia

Political Selection in China

Rethinking Foundations and Findings

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 September 2023

Melanie Manion
Melanie Manion
Affiliation:
Duke University, North Carolina

Summary

Political selection is about how individuals are selected to political office – and this substantially determines the quality of governance. The evidence favors democratic elections as the selection institution that produces high governance quality. Yet authoritarian China, where a communist party monopolizes the selection of all officials of importance, presents a sophisticated and, by some measures, successful contrast to liberal democratic versions of political selection. Understanding how and how much the preferences of the few at the political center in Beijing systematically shape the composition and actions of the tens of thousands of leaders who manage politics, society, and the economy across China is foundational to understanding China. This Element critically reviews the literature on political selection in China to better structure our knowledge on this important question. It clarifies sources of greatly disparate findings in statistical studies and identifies major descriptive challenges to these studies in rich qualitative and quantitative evidence.
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Keywords

political selectionChinameritocracypatronageperformance evaluation
Type
Element
Information
Series: Elements in Politics and Society in East Asia
Online ISBN: 9781009327145
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication: 23 November 2023

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Political Selection in China
  • Melanie Manion, Duke University, North Carolina
  • Online ISBN: 9781009327145
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Political Selection in China
  • Melanie Manion, Duke University, North Carolina
  • Online ISBN: 9781009327145
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Political Selection in China
  • Melanie Manion, Duke University, North Carolina
  • Online ISBN: 9781009327145
Available formats
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