Logrolling Under Fragmented Authoritarianism: Theory and Evidence from China
Abstract: The phenomenon of logrolling among vertical bureaucratic systems has been prevalent in China but its consequence has been under researched. This paper develops a formal model to study the effect of logrolling on policy making. We find that policies under logrolling tend to be overreaching, but policies excluded from logrolling tend to fall short of input. We provide empirical evidences by studying the logrolling between Ministry of Civil Affairs (MCA) and Ministry of Health (MOH) in China. MCA supports MOH by paying insurance premium for poor households in rural areas; in exchange, MOH supports MCA by allowing "Dibao" recipients to be automatically eligible to access healthcare services undermedical assistance. The consequences of the logrolling are: 1) the benefit tied to "Dibao" becomes too high such that it even crowds out unemployment insurance enrollment; 2) too many people enrolled in rural health insurance but too few really use the health service; 3) the supply of mental health care service is insufficient, because mental health care, which is not the priority issue for neither MOH nor MCA, is excluded from the logrolling.
