Chapter 6 Why Authoritarian Parties? The Regime Party as an ...

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CHAPTER 6 Intuitively, when the regime has fewer resources it must retire senior ranks at a higher rate and promote junior ranks at a lower rate. Suppose that the regime’s benefit s(c) from a junior party member’s service is increasing and concave in c, s ′ (c) > 0 and s ′′ (c) < 0, and that s(0) = 0. If the regime did not need to consider incentives for party membership, it would never promote (p = 0) and retire immediately (r = 1). However, a resource constrained regime will adopt promotion and retirement policies that respect the budget constraint and hold the party service constraint at equality. Jointly, the resource and party service constraints imply a set of limits on the feasible structure of career incentives within the party hierarchy: in order for the promise of seniority to attract new members, the rate of promotions p must be positive; in order to be fiscally sustainable, the retirement rate r must be above a certain minimum level; and within these boundaries, a resource constrained regime will balance the two policies – a higher rate of promotions p will be compensated by a higher retirement rate r and vice versa. More precisely, the regime chooses promotion and retirement policies that maximize its discounted net payoff subject to binding party service and budget constraints, � max p,r s(c) 1−δ(1−p) − � b 1−δ(1−r) subject to p = 1−δ(1−r) c+w δ b−w and r ≥ b−(1−δ)¯ B δ ¯ . B Intuitively, the optimal promotion rate p ∗ is decreasing in the benefit from party service s and the compensation to seniors b; p ∗ is increasing in the wage earned by non-party members w and the costs of party service c. The party service constraint implies that any increase or decrease in p ∗ will be compensated by a corresponding change r ∗ . The optimal trade- off between the promotion and retirement policies therefore reflects the relative political 20
elevance of the parameters b, w, and c. CHAPTER 6 This analysis illuminates several organizational dilemmas that we frequently observe in many single and dominant party regimes. The party service constraint implies that – in order to attract new members who provide politically valuable service – the regime must maintain a minimal rate of promotions and, in turn, a positive rate of retirement. The Chinese Communist Party, for instance, has strived to maintain an appropriate balance between these two policies at various levels of the party hierarchy. In the 1980s, Deng Xiaoping initiated efforts at rejuvenating the party’s leadership by promoting age limits for Politburo members (Manion 1992, 1993), and in 2002, Jiang Zemin instituted term limits and rotation for leading local cadres in the party and government (Bo 2007; Nathan 2003). Understandably, wemayexpectseniorrankswithinthepartytoresistpoliticalretirement and the implementation of an appropriate balance in promotion and retirement policies may present a political challenge for the party leadership. Consider Nikita Khrushchev’s proposal at the 22nd Party Congress in 1961 to revise CPSU’s statutes and implement a “systematic renewal of cadres” that would consist of term limits for individuals in elected party posts and rules forturnover inother party bodies(Burlatsky 1991, 129-30). Khrushchev’s putative mo- tives as well as the party membership’s negative reaction to this policy change accords with the implications of the present model. According to Thompson, for instance, Khrushchev worried that “a gradual freezing of personnel policy would block up the system, and stag- nation would occur” (Tompson 1995, 242-244). In terms of the present model, Khrushchev was concerned about the increasing costs of the existing retirement policy (a too low r and a too high b in the present model) and the diminishing incentives to provide party service among the junior ranks within the party. On the other hand, the membership of the Party 21
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Page 55 and 56: Bibliography Abrami, Regina, Edmund
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Page 59 and 60: tution. BIBLIOGRAPHY Huntington, Sa
Page 61 and 62: BIBLIOGRAPHY Central Committee and
Page 63: World Bank. 2008. World Development

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