A Tragedy of the<i>Nomenklatura</i>? Career incentives, political loyalty and political radicalism during China's Great Leap Forward
We review James Kung and Shuo Chen's study, published in the American Political Science Review, on the causes of China's Great Leap Famine (1959–1961). Kung and Chen explain the variations in provincial leaders' radicalism on the basis of the career incentives facing the provincial First Secretaries. In this article, we question the validity of their basic assumptions and also uncover serious issues with the Kung and Chen dataset. We conclude that their empirical findings were based on faulty foundations. Our alternative hypothesis instead explains the dynamics of political radicalism during the Great Leap Forward in terms of the provincial leaders' political loyalty to Mao. Our findings point to the significance of political networks in influencing the behavior of elites and, by extension, political and socio-economic outcomes.