This chapter presents a broad framework for analyzing institutional and leadership interactions in China. As noted in Chapter 1, this framework is heavily influenced by the “new institutionalism” literature. Much of this recent literature, however, focuses on democratic or authoritarian political systems with market economies and therefore cannot be applied easily to the study of communist nations with planned economies. The lines of cleavage in communist societies are different from those in democratic or authoritarian systems, and the all-encompassing nature of the state apparatus in a communist country makes moot much of the debate about the role of the state (versus societal influences). Yet despite these differences, there are still significant insights to be gained from this approach.

The following thirteen propositions about organizations, institutional alignments, the nature of the Chinese state, and the relationships among institutions and leaders in China should not be seen as deductive axioms on which the remainder of the chapter expands. They reflect basic steps in the argument that are developed in the course of the study and are offered to make the logic of the analytical framework as explicit as possible. These statements are phrased quite generally, and most are China-specific, although they may apply to other states as well.