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Politicised enforcement in China: evidence from the enforcement of land laws and regulations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2020

Xin Sun Open the ORCID record for Xin Sun [Opens in a new window]
Xin Sun*
Affiliation:
Lau China Institute, King’s College London, LondonWC2R 2LS, UK
*
*Corresponding author. Email: xin.sun@kcl.ac.uk
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Abstract

Politically motivated interference by politicians, or “politicised enforcement”, is a common cause of enforcement failure in many countries. Existing research on politicised enforcement has focused largely on incentives driven by electoral competition, while fewer studies analysed its mechanisms in an authoritarian context. Drawing on the case of China, this article develops the argument that politicised enforcement can be a consequence of the strategies adopted by authoritarian ruling elites to maintain political survival. Using a panel data set on the enforcement of land laws and regulations, the empirical analysis suggests that the intensity of enforcement correlates with economic performance and patron–client ties between central leaders and local officials, suggesting that political imperatives faced by ruling elites to promote economic growth and carry out clientelistic exchanges affect government decisions on enforcement. Moreover, these correlations remain robust after the implementation of reforms that promoted administrative centralisation within the enforcement agency, suggesting that politicised enforcement reflects the strategic behaviour of the ruling elites of the Party. These findings contribute to the literature on enforcement in authoritarian regimes broadly and in China specifically.

Keywords

Chinaland governanceland use violationlaw and regulatory enforcementpoliticised enforcement
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Public Policy , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , March 2021 , pp. 66 - 89
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press.

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