[Originally a Twitter exchange.]

I think the paradigm for interpreting elite politics that remained influential for too long was the notion that institutions and norms had decisively constrained personal power and channeled political competition within rule-based boundaries. I think it’s striking that Joe Fewsmith titled his book “Rethinking Chinese Politics”, because I think/hope his general approach is the primary way that future analysts understand the subject. But the title reflects the fact that he’d been straining against the tide when it was published in 2021.

In my view, within a couple years of Xi taking over it was clear that impersonal institutions and norms were not significantly constraining his exercise of personal power. By 2016, when he was strong enough to be named “core” of the party, any doubt should’ve been erased. But it took too long for this to be universally recognized. As late as 2018, Alice Miller, one of the best analysts of Chinese politics (from whom I have learned an enormous amount!) argued that “there are reasons to doubt the widespread expectation that Xi is working to stay in power after 2022” and “Xi’s performance at the 19th Congress suggests [he is not] departing from the institution-building agenda established by Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s and elaborated under Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao.”

The issue was sometimes muddied because the terms were imprecise. “Institutionalization” was usually used as a shorthand for “strong impersonal institutions that constrain the power of individuals.” But institutions can also enhance a leader’s personal power, as Xi has used them. Sometimes observers blurred multiple meanings of the term “institutionalization” and held that Xi’s actions were consistent with a move towards institutionalization, in terms of strengthening organizations. This is what Andrew Nathan seems to have meant when he wrote in 2019 that China was “more institutionalized today than when Xi took power in 2012.” The imprecision of the terms of the debate sometimes obscured the fact that the basic paradigm - in the way that it was most widely understood - was wrong.

I’m less spun up about the “factional” framework for interpreting Chinese politics, mainly because I didn’t have to argue about it as much as the “institutional constraint” one! And also because there’s a kernel of truth to the notion that interpersonal networks are important factors in Chinese politics (or any political system). I do think at some points in history these networks may have been sufficiently coherent and opposed to one another that they resembled what people think of when they mean “factions,” but in general I think faction-forward explanations assume the networks are too static and incorrectly associate them with overly-specific policy or political preferences.