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One Mandarin Benefits the Whole Clan: Hometown Favoritism in an Authoritarian Regime

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  • Quoc-Anh Do

    (Département d'économie)

  • Kieu-Trang Nguyen

    (London School of Economics)

  • Anh Tran

    (Indiana University)

Abstract

We study patronage politics in authoritarian Vietnam, using an exhaustive panel of ranking officials from 2000 to 2010 to estimate their promotions’ impact on infrastructure in their patrilineal hometowns. Favoritism is pervasive across all ranks, even among officials without budget authority. Promotions of officials strongly improve hometown infrastructure including roads, marketplaces, and irrigation. In contrast to democracies’ pork-barrel politics, elected legislators are not influential. Favoritism is likely motivated by officials’ social preferences for hometowns rather than by political considerations, because favors are narrowly targeted to small communes, and are stronger where local culture emphasizes the family bond.

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  • Quoc-Anh Do & Kieu-Trang Nguyen & Anh Tran, 2013. "One Mandarin Benefits the Whole Clan: Hometown Favoritism in an Authoritarian Regime," Sciences Po publications info:hdl:2441/2ck6as9uec9, Sciences Po.
    • Handle: RePEc:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/2ck6as9uec97fpod83b2hmfsvt
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Favoritism; Patronage; Authoritarian Regime; Political Connection; Hometown; Infrastructure;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • H72 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Budget and Expenditures

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