Coalitions of the Weak offers an original and insightful explanation of elite political outcomes in China since Mao’s rule. The central dilemma for the Chinese state lies in the need for highly networked and experienced officials who can mobilize resources to consolidate regime power versus their potential for ultimately usurping the power of the rulers. When faced with this dilemma, Victor Shih argues that Chinese leaders often choose to surround themselves with weak coalitions, compromising the centrality of networks and resourcefulness for the sake of maintaining their unchallenged thrones. For Shih, however, weakness does not necessarily denote incompetence, as the term is typically understood in bureaucratic or elite politics, but rather individuals with a weak power base. Such a coalition of the weak will lead to neopatrimonialism, policy volatility, and political instability, but these results are a small price to pay for rulers who feel insecure about their power.
Drawing on a unique dataset and historical archives, Shih examines elite political dynamics after the Great Leap Forward under Mao’s leadership. The ill-informed policy that resulted in disastrous agricultural harvests and massive famine created a negative shock to Mao’s power base. To stay in power, he had to adjust the composition of his coalition in favor of the weak. Cadres with decades of experience in revolutionary struggle were either purged or forced into retirement and replaced by cadres who had no capacity to challenge his rule. This, in turn, introduced great elite instability during the Cultural Revolution and Mao’s twilight years.
Coalitions of the Weak creatively contributes to the theoretical literature by introducing the trade-off that autocrats face in promoting personnel with strong versus weak networks that can be crucial in mobilizing resources to get challenging jobs done. Shih’s argument that autocrats prefer personnel with weak networks challenges the conventional wisdom on the Chinese Communist Party’s emphasis on meritocracy, as well as the comparative literature on revolutionary one-party dictatorship that attributes its strength to its incorporation of experienced and dedicated cadres. Yet, the trade-off is not one between loyalty and competence, which the existing literature has explored; it is about the density of the cadre-client’s network, which determines the extent to which he or she will have to rely on the dictator-patron’s patronage to survive.
According to Shih, two groups of weak leaders were promoted by Mao as he pursued this strategy. The first were the officers of the Fourth Front Army, who were previously labeled “counterrevolutionary splittists,” as long-term Mao loyalists were being purged. The second group were junior propagandists, or the “scribblers,” who were promoted during the Cultural Revolution for reasons other than their ideological zeal. Together, they allowed Mao to hang onto power—unchallenged—in his twilight years, following the departure of the ambitious Lin Biao from the political scene. The tainted military officers and junior propagandists had no resource capacity to challenge Mao’s power even if they had wanted to.
As Shih argues, such coalitions of the weak similarly explain the rehabilitation of Deng Xiaoping and the emergence of Xi Jinping as the new ruler. Lacking a strong power base in the People’s Liberation Army, Deng had to share power with tainted military officers, which gave rise to collective decision making in elite politics under his rule. Based on the same logic, Shih argues that collective rule by weakly networked elites during the 1980s and 1990s left a power vacuum that contributed to Xi’s ascendance to power. Even though his “father had belonged to the weakest of the revolutionary era factions to emerge out of the Cultural Revolution” (p. 193), Xi Jinping nonetheless emerged as the leader.
Shih advances these arguments persuasively, drawing on a unique dataset of elite politicians and historical archives. His arguments, if taken wholeheartedly, may challenge some conventional wisdom regarding Chinese politics. Given the multiple, often conflicting interpretations of Maoist elite politics by Chinese historians (Teiwes and Sun, Tang, MacFarquhar, and so on), Shih’s arguments appear particularly useful in explaining Mao’s prolonged and unchallenged rule despite his disastrous policies and ill health.
To extend the analytical leverage beyond Maoist politics, Shih leaves several parameters of the arguments underspecified. First, what is (are) the scope condition(s) of the arguments? The Great Leap Forward is the structural shift that marks the beginning of Shih’s analysis. But what is it about this ill-conceived and disastrous policy that is so indispensable in his analytical framework? He hints at the proclivity of weak leaders to adopt this strategy: “this style … was well suited for an increasingly ill dictator with declining cognitive capacity to rule until his dying day” (p. 191). That sounds intuitive; weak and insecure leaders will not want to be surrounded by strong followers who may threaten their power. However, how would this style explain the outcomes in subsequent periods: Why were the post-Mao elite leaders insecure and so pursued their own coalitions-of-the-weak strategy? The Tiananmen massacre aside, there was no comparable disastrous event or exogenous shock that shook the power base of the elite leaders in the post-1979 high-growth era. Therefore, this related question arises: How does the coalition-of-the-weak strategy explain the lineup of Xi loyalists in the upper echelons of power in the Twentieth Party Congress?
My second question pertains to the definition of a weak coalition: Why is “weak” defined as the density or centrality of a given network? Why does the depth of network influence matter—and more than competence does—in consolidating regime power? Will competent deputies not help solidify a ruler’s power and threaten it at the same time? Certainly, it would be challenging to measure the competence of military and civilian officials in the Maoist era, given the lack of formal education of these officials. But the lack of clarification on this critical point weakens its analytical leverage.
A related question is how the weak coalition argument fits with the more prevalent argument of factional elite politics to which Shih himself has contributed. A coalition of the weak appears to me to be a smaller subset of factional networks, in which one has a less dense factional network compared to other peers or competitors who are part of denser factional networks. For instance, Xi’s faction consisting of those who served with him in Fujian and Shanghai will be less dense than the Communist Party Youth League, which is a nationwide network. By this measure, Xi Jinping will belong to a weaker coalition compared to Li Keqiang, who rose through the ranks in the Youth League, despite Xi’s princeling background. In short, there is both synergy and tension with the factional politics literature that Shih could have explored to augment the analytical power of his argument.
My third and last point (albeit a minor one) concerns the presentation of Chinese names, of which there are plenty. The non-Chinse reader could have benefited from a systematic tree diagram or chart to refer to for understanding how each individual fits into the grand scheme of the argument or specific era of politics. This is a minor point about the presentation of material that could be addressed in future editions of the book.
Overall, Coalitions of the Weak is essential reading for those interested in Maoist politics and elite political dynamics in China. More broadly, it should be of great interest to scholars concerned with how authoritarian leaders make choices between strong resourceful deputies and weak, tainted, or less connected deputies who will faithfully serve, rather than challenge, their power. It should be widely read by graduate students, China scholars, and all those interested in autocracies in the years to come.
