Keeping Your Head Down: Public Profiles and Promotion under Autocracy

During the most recent party congresses in China and Vietnam, two highly anticipated candidates for promotion were sidelined. In China, Bo Xilai was arrested for corruption and stripped of his party membership. In Vietnam, Nguyen Ba Thanh remained a provincial leader with little opportunity for promotion to the Politburo. Existing arguments about promotions under authoritarian rule are unable to explain these outcomes. In particular, both candidates were competent and well connected. This cuts contrary to the expectations of both performance-based promotion and factional promotion theories. We argue that these candidates were sidelined due to a previously under-theorized factor in promotion contests—their ability to mobilize personal followings. In a literature that has focused almost exclusively on intra-elite conflict, we argue that elite-mass linkages are critical. In particular, the public profile of top leaders is important for regime legitimacy and mobilization. However, when an individual becomes exceptionally well known they become a threat to the single-party system. We test this argument on promotions in China’s 18th Party Congress in 2012 and Vietnam’s 11th Party Congress in 2011 using original data on Internet search queries and media coverage among contenders for promotion. Our approach offers new insights into the strategies authoritarian politicians use to stay afloat as well as the mistakes that sink them when competing for power under one-party rule.在中越两国近期召开的党代会期间，两位广受期待的晋升候选人均未能获得提拔。在中国，薄熙来（Bo Xilai）因腐败被捕并被开除党籍。在越南，阮巴青（Nguyen Ba Thanh）始终担任地方领导职务，几乎没有机会晋升至政治局。现有关于威权统治下官员晋升的研究无法解释上述两种结果。值得注意的是，两位候选人均具备出众能力且人脉深厚——这与基于绩效的晋升理论以及派系晋升理论的预期均相悖。我们认为，两位候选人未能获得提拔，源于晋升竞争中此前未被充分理论化的一个关键因素：其动员个人追随者的能力。现有学术文献几乎仅聚焦于精英内部冲突，而我们提出，精英与民众的联系对政权存续至关重要。具体而言，最高领导人的公众形象对政权合法性与社会动员具有重要意义，但当某位官员变得极度知名时，其将对一党制政权构成潜在威胁。我们利用针对晋升候选人的互联网搜索数据与媒体报道的原始资料，对2012年中国共产党第十八次全国代表大会（中共十八大）与2011年越南共产党第十一次全国代表大会期间的官员晋升情况进行了实证检验。本研究为威权政治家在一党制下争夺权力时的生存策略与落败诱因提供了全新的研究视角。