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

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.

Corruption, Elite Contestation, and Parliaments: Why Do Legislatures Become Stronger in Authoritarian Regimes?

“…My research, however, highlights that by altering the underlying distribution of power, corruption can contribute to strengthening institutions instead. It thus adds to a recent strand of literature applying a more nuanced view to these practices, especially in the context of authoritarianism (e.g., Jiang 2018; Jiang et al 2022; Demarest 2021; Collord 2022). In combination with this line of research, my work points to the need to study the consequences of corruption in authoritarian regimes more systematically.…”

Democratization and the State

“…For example, a recent study of civil servants in the health sector of a low-income country found an empirical correlation between competence and corruption: the individuals who paid the largest bribes to acquire a civil service position were also the most capable (Weaver, 2021). Similarly, Jiang, Shao, & Zhang (2022) argue that anti-corruption efforts may dissuade high-quality candidates from entering the civil service.…”

‘Tiger-Hunting’ and Life Satisfaction: A Matter of Trust

“…First, personal connections (e.g., shared hometown, college or former workplaces) with the top leaders in central government are believed to have an important influence on the career development of political elites in contemporary China (Shih et al, 2012;Jia et al, 2015). Such personal connections are in turn a crucial factor in the decision to investigate a potentially corrupt high-ranking official (Jiang et al, 2022). This means TH is more of a person-specific event than a regional event.…”

“…There is an emerging literature on the effects of disclosing anti-corruption information on corruption and voting behaviour (Ferraz & Finan, 2008;Cavalcanti et al, 2018;Avis et al, 2018;. Some studies have analysed the impact of the current anti-corruption campaign in China on related outcomes, such as corruption-related rent-seeking (Chen & Kung, 2019), political support (Wang & Dickson, 2022), civil servant recruitment (Jiang et al, 2022) and different corporate behaviours (e.g., Xu & Yano, 2017;Hao et al, 2020;Xu et al, 2021). Others shed light on whether investigating high-ranking officials will reduce or, inversely, increase actual corruption from a purely theoretical angle (Che et al, 2019).…”