From connection to collusion
How college admissions bow to powerful alumni in China
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6265123 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Tao Li (0000-0001-7895-4136, University of Macau), Kun Mo (University of Macau) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 35 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 25-42 |
| Publication date | 2022-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Governance (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0952-1895 • E-ISSN: 1468-0491 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/gove.12555 |
| OpenAlex | W3115558928 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 21 |
Access to college is critical for social mobility in China. Using a detailed college admission database that includes essentially all four‐year public universities from 2005 to 2013, we demonstrate that Chinese universities preallocate more admission seats to provinces that happen to fall under the leadership of their alumni. Moreover, we demonstrate that the identified admission favoritism constitutes a political exchange between public universities and their powerful alumni in the sense that (a) universities and the connected provinces tend to sign formal partnership agreements; and (b) university leaders who sign formal partnership agreements receive indirect personal gains in terms of career advancement in the party‐state bureaucracy. Our article provides causal evidence that social connections facilitate powerful government insiders' collusion and capture of public resources in a weak institutional environment
Bureaucracy · Business · China · Collusion · General partnership · Government (linguistics · Political science · Politics · Public relations · Sign (mathematics · State (computer science · China's Ethnic Minorities and Relations · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance · Hong Kong and Taiwan Politics · Law · Public Administration
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Marketing Communist Party membership in China
Managing Chinese Bureaucrats
Estimating the Causal Effects of Social Interaction with Endogenous Networks
The power of policy networks in authoritarian regimes
Does Performance Matter? Evaluating Political Selection Along the Chinese Administrative Ladder
The Institutional Logic of Collusion among Local Governments in China
Making Bureaucracy Work
Wealth, Legacy and College Admission
Financial Decentralization and Geographical Stratification of Access to Higher Education in China
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2024 - 2025 (2) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |