Financial Resources for Anti-corruption in Contemporary China: Determinants and Consequences of Regional Diversity.
详细信息
文摘
When it comes to the twenty-first century,the Chinese corruption has unprecedentedly underminded the Chinese Communist Party's legitimacy. Although the central government has paid more attention to this issue,in some regions,the financial resources for anti-corruption began to shrink rather than expand. Interestingly,with the political arrangement and bureaucratic structure relatively consistent throughout mainland China,why dose the regional diversity of financial inputs for anti-corruption turn out to be increasingly obviously? What are the determinants of local financial resources for anti-corruption in mainland China? And what is the political consequence of the gradually diversified local expenditures in anti-corruption? Using a panel data from 1997 to 2009,as well as the data of China Survey in 2008,this thesis explains the determinants and consequences of local financial input for anti-corruption in mainland China. It finds that,the developmental rationale,decentralization,power fragmentation of local authorities,and lack of social accountability,are the key reasons for the shrinking of local financial expenditures in anti-corruption. Frist of all,anti-corruption has been used by the regime as a supplementary tool to serve the market-oriented reform and any anti-corruption activities that might pose threat to local economic growth has been suppressed； as a result,the state-dominated marketization doesn't facilitate anti-corruption,but decrease local expenditure on anti-corruption. Secondly,since the financial responsibility of anti-corruption has been shifted to separate level of local authorities,decentralization has led to the shrinking of local expenditure in anti-corruption. Thirdly,as local authorities gradually lose control on local bureaucrats,expecially on the expanding informal bureaucrats,the bottom-up resistance to anti-corruption increases and correspondingly,the financial spending on local anti-corruption get suppressed. Lastly,as the development of civil society has been long term depressed,civil organization and public media fail to promote local expenditure on anti-corruption. As a result,the substantial expenditures in local anti-corruption have been highly insufficient. To handle this problem,the central has periodical mobilized a series of anti-corruption campainges and punished some corrupted local cadres by heavy-handed measures,with the purpose of showing the regime's commitment to building a clean government. The top-down involvement has signicantly regained the public's support in the central and enhance the regime's legitimacy.