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Abstract
Since the turn of the twenty-first century, state capitalism has been revived worldwide. Why has state capitalism come back into vogue in the last decade and a half, instead of being buried in the large-scale wave of privatization which started in the late 1970s? In this dissertation, I seek to understand the resilience of state capitalism from the perspective of political survival, with a primary focus on China. State capitalism has regained momentum because it serves as a viable tool for cushioning the negative effects of exogenous shocks, particularly financial crises, and it allows political leaders to obtain or retain their grip on power. Nevertheless, state capitalism is by no means a panacea for political survival, because the political imperatives of consolidating individual political elites' power may clash with the goal of maintaining sufficient sources for regime survival under certain circumstances.
By employing a multi-method research design, this dissertation offers a systematic and nuanced analysis of state capitalism. First, I construct a cross-national data set and use a difference-in-difference (DID) design to demonstrate that countries in which the state was heavily involved in the economy in the pre-crisis period suffered less during the financial crisis of the late 2000s. A case study of China based on more than 2,200 newspaper articles and a further quantitative analysis of Chinese firm-level data reveals one plausible mechanism: State-owned enterprises (SOEs) were mobilized to drive fixed asset investments and boost domestic demand during the economic turmoil. Second, I focus on China's oil industry to explore multiple mechanisms through which leadership or work experience in the state-owned oil industry may advance the political career of individual leaders. I find that political elites with control of the oil industry are likely to become indispensable problem solvers, perpetuate their power and influence, and seek and distribute rents to forge political coalitions. Finally, drawing on a data set of Chinese-listed SOEs on the stock market, I use a DID combined with entropy balancing design to show that while reshuffling SOE personnel may help political elites consolidate their power, such a strategy has a negative effect on firm performance and imposes long-term costs on the regime.
