Social Network Reconfiguration as a Micro-Foundation of Bureaucratic Power: Evidence from Chinese Poverty Alleviation Practice

Yuanhang Zhu, Yale University

How can state agents accumulate bureaucratic power when the institutional sources are limited? Drawing a case study of the multilayered bureaucratic system centered around an impoverished village in the Chinese Targeted Poverty Alleviation Campaign, I examine how the sent-down policy agents expanded their power over the poverty-alleviation projects when formal hierarchy and bureaucratic ethos were lacking. The policy agents strategically cultivated new social ties and bypassed pre-existing ties to reconfigure the social networks between them, local governments, and social actors. By simultaneously spanning the positions of structural holes and collaborating as structural folds, the policy agents derived discretion and legitimacy for policy implementation, and accumulated resources for the next rounds of network reconfiguration. I argue that the success of the policy agents’ relational work is determined by two conditions: temporality and resonance. Structural factors such as the initial capital of the policy agents in the policy field could have ambivalent effects on the results.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 201. Sources and Uses of Power in Chinese Politics