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The Price of Probity: Anticorruption and Adverse Selection in the Chinese Bureaucracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 December 2020

Junyan Jiang Open the ORCID record for Junyan Jiang [Opens in a new window] ,
Zijie Shao Open the ORCID record for Zijie Shao [Opens in a new window]  and
Zhiyuan Zhang
Junyan Jiang*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Columbia University, USA
Zijie Shao
Affiliation:
School of Government and Public Affairs, Communication University of China, Beijing, China
Zhiyuan Zhang
Affiliation:
Department of Government and Public Administration, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: jj3160@columbia.edu
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Abstract

Fighting corruption is often seen as a crucial step toward building better institutions, but how it affects political selection remains less well understood. This article argues that in systems where corruption functions as an informal incentive for government to attract talent, anticorruption initiatives that curb rent-seeking opportunities may unintentionally weaken both the quality and the representativeness of the bureaucracy. The authors test this argument in China using an original nationwide survey of government officials and an identification strategy that exploits exogenous variations in enforcement levels created by the recent anticorruption campaign. The study finds that intensified enforcement has generated two potentially negative selection effects: a deterrence effect that lowers the average ability of newly recruited bureaucrats, and a compositional effect that discourages the entry of lower-class individuals in favor of those who are affluent and well connected. These findings highlight important hidden human capital costs of corruption elimination in developing countries.

Keywords

political selectionanticorruptionbureaucratic recruitmentrepresentative bureaucracyinstrumental variableChina
Type
Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 52 , Issue 1 , January 2022 , pp. 41 - 64
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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