Professor Jiangnan Zhu’s new book, Bribery as a Third Path to Power? Political Selection in China Beyond Performance and Patronage is now available online.  This book is in the Series of Cambridge Elements in Chinese Economy and Governance.  In this book, she studies the dynamics of personnel corruption in the public sector, which is often known as “buying and selling of government offices.” It is an important type of corruption that can significantly impact political selection and governance quality; however, it remained underexplored previously, partly due to the challenge of data collection and a lack of analytical frameworks.

In her book, Professor Zhu sets personnel corruption as a new frontier of corruption research. She employs a dual perspective– corruption and elite mobility – to analyze the distribution of office-selling across the Chinese administrative matrix and its various forms and implications. She uses two novel, self-compiled datasets, and proposes a tripartite framework of performance, patronage, and purchase to reimagine political selection in China. This new analytical framework theoretically challenges the traditional competence-loyalty dichotomy. It highlights the coexistence of multiple governance models: a meritocratic state prioritizing competence, a clientelist state emphasizing loyalty, and an investment state bound by money.

Several renowned scholars have highly recommended this book. The author thanks everyone who offered help and support throughout her research process. She also highly appreciates the funding support from the General Research Fund for this project. This title is now available Open Access on Cambridge Core: https://cup.org/4bBsECC