(Assignment 3) Institutional design and anti- corruption in main land China - Akshyah Kumar

Melanie Manion

1.    “This chapter focuses not on corruption per se but rather on China’s anti- corruption strategy and institutions, focusing on change and continuity.”

2.    “After formally rejecting Maoist radicalism in favour of a policy that embraced allowing some to ‘get rich first’, it is more difficult than before for leaders of the Communist Party–state to define clearly their expectations of moral conduct for public officials, even though most officials are also Communist Party members. It is much more difficult to rely on moral suasion to convince officials to do the right thing.”

3.    “A decision about whether a case constitutes a simple violation of party discipline or a crime of corruption is essentially a political decision, which leaders of party committees make, usually favouring the former + DICs are effectively unable to monitor party committee leaders, who wield broad executive powers at every level of the state hierarchy”

4.    “Chinese leaders have begun to recognise fighting corruption as a long- term task, not a series of battles. Their new strategy gives priority to education, enforcement and especially prevention. Corruption prevention is the new element in this strategy.”

5.    “This new institutional turn recognises the need to change the incentives that structure corrupt activities. This differs fundamentally from issuing rules and prohibitions. It targets corruption- generating procedures and opportunities.”

6.    “There is broad agreement in the literature that agency credibility is a necessary (albeit insufficient) condition for anti- corruption effectiveness, especially to encourage reporting of corruption: self- enforcing designs that bind the ruler to her commitment by structuring incentives to make adherence to the bargain after the fact prefer able to reneging for the ruler, thereby ruling out this latter option + the role of a large elite group able to take collective action to constrain rulers who renege on bargains + an empowered, investigative, free mass media and an engaged, electronically linked- up mass public.”

7.    “Official recognition of flaws in anti- corruption institutions and an institutional design turn towards restructuring incentives to prevent corruption constitute important shifts that are likely to produce better results.”

FINAL STATEMENT: In a society like China, the only solution is to address the persistence of corruption in the current context: what aspects of anti-corrupt institutions incentivizes/motivates/prods/emboldens people to continue or engage in corrupt activities?