Adaptive Authoritarianism via Central Directives and Policy Experiments

许多专制国家完全依靠镇压、庇护和操纵选举来统治。其他专制政体的特点在于它们的适应性。作为一种自上而下的政治体制，一党制专制国家在自上而下下达命令的同时，有选择地进行政策实验。这两个行动是如何联系在一起的？中央政府什么时候鼓励实验，什么时候坚持严格执行政策？​本项目编制了1978年至2020年一党政府发布的中央指令和政策实验的原始数据集。这项研究计划将服务于三个关键目标。​这将揭示适应性治理在适应性威权国家中是如何运作和演变的，以及该政权是否可能保持适应性和弹性。其次，对于比较政治学家来说，该项目将引起人们对威权主义研究中被忽视的适应主题的关注和阐明。第三，该项目将通过展示一种超越描述并激发新数据收集的可检验的适应性治理理论，帮助推进政治经济学和国际发展中新兴的适应性治理领域。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Many autocracies rely solely on repression, patronage, and manipulated elections to rule. Other autocracies are distinguished by their adaptive qualities. As a top-down political system, autocracies with single-party states simultaneously issue commands from the top and selectively conduct policy experiments. How are the two actions linked? When do central authorities encourage experimentation, and when do they insist on strict enforcement of policies? This project examines how a single-party autocratic government issues a mixture of ambiguous and clear directives to guide policy experimentation, as well as the conditions under which different types of commands are issued. This project compiles an original dataset on both the central directives issued and the policy experiments conducted by a single-party government from 1978 to 2020. This research program will serve three key objectives. First, the project will produce the first and most comprehensive dataset to date on both commands and experiments in the single-party autocratic bureaucracy. This will shed empirical light on how adaptive governance works and has evolved in the adaptive authoritarian state, and whether or not the regime is likely to remain adaptable and resilient. Second, for comparative political scientists, the project will bring attention to and illuminate the neglected theme of adaptation in the study of authoritarianism. Third, the project will help advance the emerging field of adaptive governance in political economy and international development by demonstrating a testable theory of adaptive governance that goes beyond description and motivates new data collection.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.