Conclusions

This study is designed to explain the intra-provincial inequality of financing compulsory education from a political perspective. A heteroskedastic linear model that takes into account the influence of leaders’ promotion speed on the variance of their behavior shows that the faster runners in a hierarchy are the faster learners in institutions and their behavior regarding education equalization is more convergent. The main hypotheses are supported by the data presented in previous chapters. Governors, as more promotable leaders, are more likely to be constrained by the rule of promotion, while secretaries, as more terminal officials, are more likely to be constrained by the retirement rule. Among their work and education experiences, those having an equalizing effect on education are only significant for secretaries, yet those with a dis-equalizing impact are only significant, or more influential, for governors. This fact implies that experience variables are dominated by the institutional rules. Even though fiscal dependency of province as a measure of Beijing’s fiscal capacity relative to individual province has some systematic effect on education inequality, its effect generally depends on the overall economic level, which also indicates the determinant status of personnel rules. Hence, the study argues that elitism and political economics, as well as institutionalism are most important, while institutionalism dominates the rest.