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MOVING BEYOND FACTIONS: USING SOCIAL NETWORK ANALYSIS TO UNCOVER PATRONAGE NETWORKS AMONG CHINESE ELITES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 May 2016

Franziska Barbara Keller
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Abstract

Informal connections play an important role in regimes all across the world, but among China's political elite, it is particularly factional affiliation that is said to structure contention over who will rule and who will fall victim to a purge. This article identifies two approaches to measuring factional ties in the literature: the exploratory approach traces alliance ties through qualitative assessment of insider sources, while the structured approach uses publicly available data to infer factions from shared characteristics. The article combines the two by arguing that informal politics is better conceptualized as a process of alliance formation shaped by an underlying social (network) structure. Among the structured approaches, coworker networks best capture the latter, but this can be further refined by noting the number of instances of working together, or by taking into account promotions that have occurred while the two individuals were coworkers.

Keywords

social network analysisChinaelite politicspatronagefactionsCommunist Partypowerinformal institutionscentral committeenetwork centrality
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of East Asian Studies , Volume 16 , Issue 1: Contentious Elite in China: New Evidence and Approaches , March 2016 , pp. 17 - 41
Copyright
Copyright © East Asia Institute 2016 

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