Original
Promoting Meritocracy through Recognition: The Post-recognition Career Trajectories of China’s Model County Party Secretaries
Abstract
Abstract The increasingly proactive role of central authority in managing subprovincial leaders is understudied and our understanding of the function of political recognition in contemporary China remains inadequate. By adopting an expanded view of political meritocracy and using difference-in-differences analysis of original data about China’s model county Party secretaries, we demonstrate the ramifications of political recognition in generating a merit-based fast track and find that the recognition of model county Party secretaries has a lasting positive impact on recipients’ subsequent career advancement, although this impact is uneven. These findings enhance our understanding of the role of centrally bestowed political honours in promoting meritocracy, the non-institutionalized soft measures in shaping political incentives and the central–local interaction in the dynamics of political recognition in contemporary China.
中文
以认可促进贤能政治：中国模范县委书记获认可后的职业轨迹
摘要
中央权威在管理省级以下领导干部方面日益主动的角色仍未得到充分研究，而我们对当代中国政治认可功能的理解也依然不足。本文采用一种扩展的贤能政治视角，并对关于中国模范县委书记的原创数据进行双重差分分析，展示政治认可在形成以贤能为依据的快速晋升通道方面所产生的影响，并发现对模范县委书记的认可对受认可者此后的职业晋升具有持久的正向影响，尽管这一影响并不均衡。这些发现有助于我们理解中央授予的政治荣誉在促进贤能政治中的作用、非制度化柔性手段在塑造政治激励方面的作用，以及当代中国政治认可动态中的中央—地方互动。
关键词
贤能政治、政治认可、模范县委书记、职业轨迹、干部晋升、政治激励、中央地方关系、双重差分