Accountability and inequality in single-party regimes
Subtitle: a comparative analysis of Vietnam and China
By: Regina Abrami, Edmund Malesky, Yu Zheng
Contributors: Malesky, Edmund; Zheng, Yu, Ph.D.; Harvard Business School
Series: Working paper / Harvard Business School -- 08-099; Working paper (Harvard Business School) -- 08-099
Publisher: Harvard Business School
Published: 2008
Place of publication: Boston
Language: eng
Number of pages: 46
Description: Over the past two decades, no two economies have averaged more rapid economic growth than China and Vietnam. But while China's income inequality has risen rapidly over that same time frame, Vietnam's has only grown moderately. Structural and socio-cultural determinants fail to account for these divergent pathways. Existing political variables are also unhelpful. China and Vietnam are coded in exactly the same way, even in the path-breaking work on authoritarian regimes. In this paper, we take a deeper look at political institutions in the two countries, demonstrating that profound differences between the polities directly impact distributional choices. In particular, we find that Vietnamese elite institutions require construction of broader coalitions of policymakers, place more constraints on executive decision making, and have more competitive selection processes. As a result, there are stronger political motivations for Vietnamese leaders to provide equalizing transfers that limit inequality growth.
Notes: "May 2008"--Publisher's web site.

Includes bibliographical references.