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China and Inner Asia
Organized Panel Session
Studies of bureaucratic control in China typically emphasise the leadership’s use of performance criteria to overcome principal-agent problems. In contrast, this paper explores the leadership’s use of uncertainty as a method of bureaucratic control. By uncertainty, we refer to the central leadership’s use of sudden campaigns—such as the ‘war on pollution’—to signal new policy priorities, or unexpected punishments—such as the anti-corruption campaign—to deter previously accepted behaviours. Amidst competing policy priorities, bureaucrats increasingly respond to these ad hoc, internal signals from the Center over on-paper performance targets. We argue that governance by uncertainty results in a trade-off between bureaucratic control and effective policy implementation: Uncertainty disciplines bureaucrats by keeping them fearful of sudden reprisals, and responsive to the Center’s authority. However it also discourages bureaucrats from implementing policies that require high up front investments with long-term payoffs. We use the case China’s faltering emissions trading scheme to demonstrate this tradeoff. In illustrating how governance by uncertainty affects policy implementation, this paper questions the centrality of performance criteria in monitoring and controlling China’s bureaucrats.
Iza (Yue) Ding
University of Pittsburgh
Denise van der Kamp
City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong