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Rivals within: political factions, loyalty, and elite competition under authoritarianism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 January 2020

Ting Chen Open the ORCID record for Ting Chen [Opens in a new window]  and
Ji Yeon Hong Open the ORCID record for Ji Yeon Hong [Opens in a new window]
Ting Chen
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong
Ji Yeon Hong*
Affiliation:
Division of Social Science, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Hong Kong
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: jyhong@ust.hk
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Abstract

Loyalty is a permanent concern to dictators. It is unclear, however, whether loyalty to a dictator assures the ruling group's cohesiveness. This study shows that authoritarian political elites under promotion pressure, while remaining loyal to their superior, also compete within factions to outrival their peers. Exploiting data on Chinese provincial leaders and local media reports on corruption investigations and industrial accidents (2000–2014), we find that Chinese elites promote negative news related to their co-faction peers as frequently as - or, depending on the measure, even more often than - they promote similar news regarding members of other factions. We also find that negative reports indeed reduce the promotion probability of reported cadres, while increasing that of reporting ones.

Keywords

Factionselite competitionmediaauthoritarianismChina
Type
Original Article
Information
Political Science Research and Methods , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , July 2021 , pp. 599 - 614
Copyright
Copyright © The European Political Science Association 2020

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https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/5EBK7S
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