Seeking performance or control? Tethered party innovation in China’s performance evaluation system

Abstract In the Xi Jinping era of rising central power and reduced local autonomy, is there still room for policy experimentation? If any, what is the nature of this innovative behavior? This article argues that the party state still allows much room for policy innovation, only that this space for innovation is conditioned by the Party’s concern for political control. Drawing on original field research, the article examines two cases of the Chinese Communist Party’s innovation in personnel management, with a particular focus on reforming the Performance Evaluation System (PES) to better incentivize cadres to fulfill work targets. The analyses of the systemic changes of the PES resulting from the Party’s innovation efforts as well as the nature of such changes show that despite the Party’s tireless efforts to reinvent the PES regime so as to better motivate cadres to fulfill work targets, these efforts are undermined at the same time by the Party’s pursuit of bureaucratic stability, personnel control, and grip on power. The research seeks to bring findings about the PES into more meaningful conversations with the scholarship on policy innovation and experimentation.