Must-Read: Weijia Li: Party-State Relationships in One-Party Regimes: “Although China and Soviet Union are both Communist regimes…
…they… feature very different party-state relationships. In contemporary China, the party secretary exerts political leadership, but fiscal and economic power is delegated to the governor. In the Soviet Union, the party secretary retained substantial and comprehensive economic power. I argue that the difference can be attributed to the discrepancy between market economy and planned economy. Using a simple growth model, I derive economic consequences of fiscal delegation that are consistent with empirical regularities. The delegation of fiscal power drastically reduces central authority’s concern about local officials’ loyalty… solves a major dilemma between loyalty and competence in autocracy… promotes political stability and meritocracy in China…