Fragmented Authoritarianism Revisited: The Chinese State as a Loosely Coupled System

xueguang zhou, Stanford University
Yuze Sui, Stanford University

This study re-examines the prevailing image of fragmented authoritarianism in China in light of the theoretical framework of “loose coupling” in organizational analysis. In contrast to the rational model of organizations, the “loose coupling” model argues that organizations are often characteristic of a loosely coupled system in which different elements are responsive to one another but in ways that are often delayed, imprecise, and preserve their own identities and autonomy. We identify the institutional mechanisms that cultivate and reproduce the loose-coupling phenomena in the Chinese bureaucracy, despite the tremendous efforts of the Leninist party organization to reshape it into a tightly-coupled system. Empirical evidence from fieldwork observations and patterns of personnel flow in a large Chinese bureaucracy are used to illustrate this line of arguments and to make sense of the observed bureaucratic behaviors.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 61. Historical Social Sciences and China (I): New Approaches to Studying Elite Politics