Patronage and Economic Growth in China

This paper analyzes possible contributing bureaucratic factors to China's spectacular 40-year economic growth. At the level of practical bureaucratic incentives for officials, some scholars point to political patronage as both an appropriate and effective contributor to economic growth. They argue that the patronage bureaucracy system is an optimal alternative political model to the impersonal and merit-based Weberian model for developing countries. In this paper, we test this theory by empirically analyzing the relationship of patronage to economic growth against the effects of both fiscal federalism and promotion tournament models. We find that political patronage in China appears to reduce economic growth, in another word, the patronage hinders economic growth.