Authoritarian Ruling Parties' Recruitment Dilemma: Evidence from China

Abstract

In autocracies, party membership offers benefits to citizens who join the ruling party. The recruitment process consists of (i) citizens' applying to become party members, followed by (ii) ruling parties' selection among applicants. Hence, I propose that ruling parties can face a “recruitment dilemma” when the citizens who apply for party membership with an eye on its benefits do not overlap with the ruling party's targeted population. Previous research assumes that the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) interest in co-opting white-collar workers is matched by those workers’ interest in becoming party members. However, it is their emergence as an essential social group that changed the CCP membership's pattern, leading it to adapt its co-optation strategy to solve the recruitment dilemma. Using surveys across multiple waves between 2005 and 2017, I show (i) changes in application patterns, (ii) the CCP's recruitment dilemma when they receive applications from more laborers than white-collar workers, and (iii) the CCP solution of rejecting laborers in favor of white-collar workers.