Central-Local Conflicts Of Interest In China's Cadre Evaluation System

The cadre evaluation system is one of the most important political institutions in the contemporary People's Republic of China.It bolsters the government's legitimacy by basing promotion on meeting concrete economic and development objectives.It is one of the key institutions that have allowed China to decentralized administratively while maintaining central political control,by addressing the principal-agent problem inherent to all bureaucracies.This thesis evaluates two major models of how the cadre evaluation system works:the "transmission belt" model,which emphasizes central control over local governments,and the "negotiation" model,which focuses on role of bargaining between different levels of government.The structure of the current cadre evaluation system is generally thought of as a unified system.However,this research shows that there are in fact many distinct responsibility systems.Moreover,even a single evaluation system relies on a large number of evaluators from different organizations.Finally,while the incentive of promotion encourages officials to think about their long-term careers and demands of the central government,the ability of local governments to provide financial and reputational incentives allows officials to think about short-term gain and the demands of their immediate superiors.As a result,the structure of cadre evaluation system is fragmented both horizontally and vertically.This thesis also shows that local governments are able to use the language of evaluation systems themselves to adjust central objectives.Local governments are also able to write their own interests into evaluations,which are sometimes in conflict with central interests.As the above implies,the cadre evaluation system,despite its original intention,is not simply a top-down system for translating central policy into local actions.The fragmentation of the cadre evaluation system,along with the variety of methods that local officials can use to adjust and alter central objectives,suggests that the"negotiation" model is a more appropriate description of the operation of the cadre evaluation system.