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Coalitional Behavior among the Chinese Military Elite: A Nonrecursive, Simultaneous Equations, and Multiplicative Causal Model*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

William Pang-yu Ting
William Pang-yu Ting*
Affiliation:
University of Michigan
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Abstract

At least three competing proto-theories of Chinese military coalitional behavior (those of William Whitson, Harvey Nelsen, and William Parrish) have been proposed. This study attempts to: (1) reformulate these proto-theories into testable mathematical models, (2) test these reformulated models empirically, and (3) suggest an alternative theory of Chinese military coalitional behavior. I use causal modeling techniques to reformulate these proto-theories into mathematical ones and gather data on 423 members of the Chinese military elite to test the zero-predictions and structural equations of each model. The findings indicate that all three proto-theories may be misspecified theoretically. I then propose an alternative theory, which integrates features from all three proto-theories. This theory argues that members of the Chinese military elite form coalitions according to a set of affective ties and shared professional interests. This set of relationships is stated in mathematical terms, and the mathematical predictions deduced from it fit empirical data.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 73 , Issue 2 , June 1979 , pp. 478 - 493
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1979

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Footnotes

*

Hubert Blalock and James Townsend provided constructive comments, insights, and friendship during the writing of this article, for which I am very grateful. They were instrumental in nurturing my interests in methodology and Chinese politics, respectively. My colleagues Robert Axelrod, Robert Dernberger, Lute Erbring, Samuel Eldersveld, Michel Oksenberg, Roy Pierce, J. David Singer, Raymond Tanter, William Zimmerman, and especially Allen Whiting provided very helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. My thanks also go to my wife Linda Ting for her assistance in computer programming and translation. An earlier version of this article was presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, New York, 1978.

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