Agents with Agency: How Subnational Officials Exercise their Autonomy Under Authoritarianism

Abstract

Subnational officials in strong authoritarian states are often depicted as passive agents under central command or opportunists resisting central control. This dissertation rejects the former characterization by recognizing the substantial autonomy of subnational officials and challenges the latter characterization by spotlighting the central-local alignment of interests as a common situation. The more the interests of the central government and the local level coincide, the more autonomy is granted. In particular, how subnational officials exercise their autonomy depends on whether the center supervises policy outcomes. Using rigorous quantitative methods, this dissertation examines how subnational officials exercise autonomy in unsupervised and supervised policy areas, respectively, using China’s social security system and the COVID-19 lockdown. Without top-down supervision, China’s subnational officials delivered different redistributive outcomes that reflected their perceived threat of local collective action. With top-down supervision, I show that China’s subnational officials delivered similar pandemic control outcomes but chose different lockdown measures that reflected their perceived top-down political priority. In sum, subnational officials in authoritarian states are actors with strong agency whose preferences have important implications for policy decisions. The lack of variation in policy outcomes does not necessarily mean a lack of autonomy.