Chapter 2 investigates the ascent of technocrats to key roles in defining the technological foundations of the hydropower nation. The wartime crisis and the active involvement of the state in hydropower development and the training of engineers deepened the connection between hydropower and the Chinese nation. Before the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), the National Resources Commission of the Nationalist government conducted studies on China’s hydropower potential. During the war it began constructing hydropower projects in the southwest to mitigate the energy shortage the war produced. By uncovering the many interactions between American and Chinese institutions and individuals, this chapter explores the importance of transnational exchange in strengthening the technological foundations of the hydropower nation. It also delves into the early social and environmental impacts of the nascent hydropower nation. Despite being limited in scale, social and environmental disturbances in the 1940s foreshadowed the significant human toll and ecological changes that would occur in later decades in a fully realized hydropower nation.

This framework chapter for the edited collection begins with a definition of political patronage adopted from existing research: the power of political actors to appoint individuals, using their own discretion, to non-elective positions in the public sector, irrespective of the legality of the decision. These individuals tend to be directly involved in making public policy. The book is about patronage appointments in bureaucracies in Asian countries, some with well-developed civil service systems and minimal patronage, some with high levels of patronage and a weak civil service, and others between these extremes. The framework chapter develops a typology of patronage types based on two primary criteria: basis of trust (political or personal loyalty to: the political party, politician, or a group); and, the major role of political appointees (the extent to which they influence public policy). Each of the countries in the edited collection tests the appropriateness of this typology for individual Asian case studies illustrating the fact that not all patronage is the same and what is important is the tasks being performed by appointees and the nature of the trust relationship.

Although much of this book concerns political dynamics in the Mao Era, the tumults of the Cultural Revolution and the coalition rule that resulted from late-Mao politics indirectly led to an important political outcome by the 2010s, the survival of Xi Jinping as one of the few princelings among political leaders on the civilian side of the CCP. This created one of the preconditions for Xi to dominate the party soon after taking office as the head of the party in late 2012 – the relative absence of competition and oversight from other highly networked princelings. In the 1980s, two forces drove the selection of future leaders in the party. First, founding leaders such as Chen Yun and Deng Xiaoping had a genuine desire to promote a new generation of well-educated, loyal potential successors as their health began to fail them. Second, as the rest of the book has argued, the top leadership and even mid-level officials at the ministerial level did not want serious competitors to their power bases, and each pursued a coalition of the weak strategy within his own jurisdiction. Thus, besides a few senior veterans who had placed their children on accelerated paths for promotion, the vast majority of revolutionary veterans resisted the promotion of princelings due to their Red Guard activism during the Cultural Revolution and to fear of interference by well-networked princelings.

Authoritarian regimes must grapple with a fundamental source of instability that a significant redistribution of power, often unseen or only partially observed, can radically alter the incentives of regime insiders and overturn initially stable equilibria (Acemoglu et al. 2008). Although institutional features such as authoritarian legislatures and a ruling party can alleviate the incentives to usurp the incumbent leader to some extent, especially among lower-level officials (Gandhi 2008; Svolik 2012), they cannot fundamentally remove the incentives to grab power forcefully in the top echelon of these regimes. For one, one-party states by design entrust enormous power in the hands of the top few officials or even in the hands of one person. For ambitious officials just one layer below the very top facing a low probability of ordinary promotion, the reward for achieving an extra step upward can be enormous and can justify a risky gamble, especially if an external shock leads to a significant redistribution of power. Even for those who are already in the top echelon of the ruling party, a gamble to break the existing power-sharing equilibrium can reap enormous rewards as the power and resources of authoritarian colleagues are consolidated into one’s hands. Knowing the dangers of these possibilities, authoritarian leaders also have the incentives to preempt potentially threatening colleagues by removing them from power with coercive measures. In the absence of credible constitutional frameworks or electoral pressure to stop the actions of the top leadership, the stable façade of authoritarian politics can quickly descend into coups, purges, and assassinations.

More than a half-century of isolation and ideological limits meant theoretical and practical knowledge of market economics was very limited. But the view exemplified by President Kravchuk of Ukraine that before reforms started one needed to train experts and managers was much overstated. In retrospect, it is clear that enough expertise was available to move forward, especially in Central Europe where many academics had exposure to Western economics. In the USSR, the numbers were indeed far lower, but these could be easily supplemented by foreign advisors –some diaspora returnees, others seconded from international organizations. Most important, the numbers of market experts needed was not large – a few ministerial and deputy ministerial positions, and heads of key departments numbered not in the thousands nor even hundreds. The best example of the limited need was the Baltics, which were among the fastest reformers with virtually no experts in market economics; a physicist Einars Repše, heading the Central Bank, was considered by international experts one of the most effective in the entire region. The chapter makes these arguments while providing an inside look at many key individuals involved, including Balcerowicz in Poland, Bokros of Hungary, Gaidar in Russia, and Pynzenyk in Ukraine.