Overstretched Leviathan: Bureaucratic Overload and Grassroots Governance in China

Abstract

Grassroots governance provides micro-foundations for regime capacity and durability. Although the Chinese state is often characterized as strong and resilient, the bureaucratic roots of the state have been increasingly stretched thin and are under enormous pressure. Grassroots cadres are burdened with exhausting and increasing governance demands set by higher levels, an intrusive and intensified supervision and accountability system, and burgeoning red tape. This study addresses the question of bureaucratic overload in grassroots governance by investigating its causes, manifestations, impact on organizational behavior and governance outcomes, and implications for regime capacity and durability.

Drawing on extensive field research across China conducted in 2021-2022, the study proposes a supply-and-demand framework that focuses on the structural imbalances between the governing capacities of the grassroots bureaucracy and the governing ambitions of the authoritarian state. The supply-side story investigates the grassroots bureaucracy’s limited and declining capacity and governing resources along three dimensions – political, personnel, and fiscal. The demand-side analysis explores the growing ambitions of the authoritarian regime leadership that aims to achieve extensive control over both the populace and its own state agents. The increasing tension between limited capacity on the ground and the expanding scope of state control alienates local officials and undermines overall governance. By making sense of the conundrum faced by street-level bureaucrats, the study analyzes party-state operations at the grassroots with attention to the broad patterns, structural changes, and inner logic of the Chinese political system.

Bureaucratic overload provides opportunities for observers to see through the façade of a strong state and scrutinize the roots of authoritarian rule. It shows that what matters is not just the absolute level of state capacity, but the gap between state capacity and the state’s ambitions. If state capacity fails to match the scope and depth of state intervention, the Leviathan can be overstretched, undermining the quality of governance it seeks to achieve. I demonstrate these patterns by examining how the state penetrates society in two key policy areas — rural governance and pandemic control — and how the state controls its agents. Given the high-profile victories declared by Chinese national leaders in rural poverty elimination and COVID-19 management, I show how street-level bureaucrats tell a different story of these successes. Shifting from the party-state’s control of the masses to its internal control of state agents, the dissertation investigates various kinds of red tape within the Chinese bureaucracy. Finally, I discuss why the official remedies for alleviating the burden remain ineffective for most grassroots cadres.

This research contributes to our understanding of state building and state capacity at the local level by highlighting the tension between state (in)capacity and state governing ambitions, scope, and approach, especially the hidden costs of state penetration and overstretching. It also sheds light on the nature and trajectory of the Chinese bureaucracy in comparison with the Weberian ideal type. Finally, it adds to the scholarship on authoritarian politics by paying special attention to the understudied grassroots, non-elite regime enablers in China and the interplay between the authoritarian political environment and bureaucratic governance.