Autonomy in Autocracy: Explaining the Creation of Ethnic Autonomous Territories in Post-1949 China

Abstract: While ethnic local autonomy has been considered as an institution of conflict management, why political leaders decide to introduce it in the first place, and how their presence leads to political stability both remain unclear. Drawing from the case of post-1949 China, I consider the granting of ethnic local autonomy in the context of authoritarian delegation. Drawing from a novel index of elite connectedness and a unique historical dataset of local jurisdictional divisions, I conclude that ethnic local autonomy, as an endeavor of local decentralization, allows the central leader to establish his supremacy over subnational political elites while countering his inner-circle rivals. To explore the scope conditions, I analyze the creation of district-level municipalities after the 1980s, as well as other institutional changes in Imperial and Republican China. I also assemble an original cross-national dataset to study the presence of ethnic local autonomy in post-WWII authoritarian regimes.