The Modern Regency

Datos Bibliográficos

ID6181288
AutoresJiangnan Zhu (0000-0002-5981-6886, Department of Politics and Public Administration, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong), Nikolai Mukhin (0000-0002-4884-5411, Department of Politics and Public Administration, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong)
Año2021
Volumen54
Número1-2
Páginas24-44
Fecha de publicación2021-06-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaCommunist and Post-Communist Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0967-067X • E-ISSN: 1873-6920
EditorialUniversity of California Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1525/j.postcomstud.2021.54.1-2.24
OpenAlexW3172777847
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas4
Referencias citadas46

Extant literature has shown the importance of routinized leadership succession for authoritarian resilience. However, the factors leading to orderly power transitions in autocracies are unclear. This article argues that an orderly succession requires relatively peaceful exit of the incumbent. Through a comparison of the power transition trajectories of the post-Stalin USSR and China in the Age of Deng Xiaoping, this article proposes three conditions that facilitate the voluntary retirement of dictators, including their strong political will to institutionalize successions, adequate capacity to initiate the plan, and reliable retirement packages. Meeting all three conditions, leadership succession in China has resulted in the emergence of the “modern regency” in which the elder leaders can retire relatively voluntarily and continuously influence the politics of a regime after their retirement, especially by proactively supervising future leadership successions. In contrast, without meeting the initial requirements for a dictator’s exit, the case of leadership succession in the USSR is characterized as parallel succession, which includes neither a credible plan on routinization of elite politics nor simultaneous coexistence of the elder leaders and the younger cohort as in the case of China. Moreover, during similar regime crises in the late 1980s, the arrangement of the modern regency helped prolong the authoritarian regime in China, while the USSR collapsed without this safeguard

Authoritarianism · Autocracy · China · Collective leadership · Democracy · Dictator · Ecological succession · Economic system · Economics · Elite · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance · Chinese history and philosophy · Law · Social Policy and Reform Studies