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Abstract
This dissertation examines sources of authoritarian regime adaptability by analyzing the market-drivenevolution of once centralized political elite-training institutions in China and how it contributes to regime
adaptability. Findings in my fieldwork and survey data indicate that local cadres demanded an improvement
of training resources due to traditional intra-party institutions’ limitations in providing the diverse
training they need in the reform era. Such a demand generated a market with diversified, competitive
societal training providers, which was tolerated, acknowledged, and regulated by the CCP with the consideration
of enhancing its governance capability and adaptability. Meanwhile, the CCP has not loosened
its grip on traditional cadre training institutions due to the consistent goal of maintaining its political
cohesiveness and ideological dominance. Accordingly, a dual-track cadre training system exists in China,
in which traditional agencies provide political training that reinforces the regimes’ ideological dominance,
while market agencies provide competence training that improves governing agents’ capability and performance.
I evaluate the effect of such a dual-track system on China’s regime adaptability by examining
the relationship between training and the CCP’s cadre selection, promotion, and discipline. The empirical
analyses show that both traditional and marketized training is conducive to grassroots-level and
prefectural-level cadre promotion. However, their relationship with the regime’s anticorruption practice
differs: while traditional training is negatively associated with the probability of prosecution, marketized
training is positively related to the probability of prosecution. This dissertation is the first empirical study
dedicated to the inner workings of marketized cadre training. Empirically, this research contributes to
our understanding of China’s evolving cadre management institution and serves as an indispensable addition
to existing research on cadre training and political selection in China. Theoretically, by revealing a
dual-track process of authoritarian institutional adaptation, this study contributes to the authoritarian
resilience thesis. It presents a framework that simultaneously addresses the frequently contradictory priorities
of authoritarian adaptability: political cohesiveness that unites the elites and government performance
that satisfies the masses.