From poverty to trust: Political implications of the anti-poverty campaign in China
| Author | Cai (Vera) Zuo,Zhongyuan Wang,Qingjie Zeng |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/01925121211001759 |
| Published date | 01 March 2023 |
| Date | 01 March 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Original Research Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/01925121211001759
International Political Science Review
2023, Vol. 44(2) 277 –298
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/01925121211001759
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From poverty to trust: Political
implications of the anti-poverty
campaign in China
Cai (Vera) Zuo
School of International Relations and Public Affairs, Fudan University, China
Zhongyuan Wang
Fudan Institute for Advanced Study in Social Sciences, Fudan University, China
Qingjie Zeng
School of International Relations and Public Affairs, Fudan University, China
Abstract
Despite the rapid decrease in poverty across the developing world, there have been few attempts to analyze
the implication of poverty alleviation on regime legitimacy. Bridging the literature on poverty alleviation
and political trust, this analysis examines the mechanisms through which poverty reduction affects trust in
local elected and appointed officials. Using an original survey on the Target Poverty Alleviation campaign
in China and causal mediation analyses, we find that beneficiary status is positively associated with political
trust. The perception of anti-poverty governance quality, rather than economic evaluation, is the mediator
through which beneficiary status affects political trust. Moreover, the intensified non-formalistic elite-mass
linkage developed in the poverty alleviation campaign enhances political trust through the improvement of
perception of governance quality. These findings have implications for mechanisms through which poverty
reduction affects political trust and the type of political linkage that sustains regime legitimacy.
Keywords
Poverty alleviation, political trust, China, elite-mass linkage, governance perception
Introduction
While the progress in global poverty reduction over the past decades has received much attention,
empirical analyses examining the impact of poverty reduction on political support remain scant.
Researchers have long recognized the potential political importance of poverty reduction.
Corresponding author:
Cai (Vera) Zuo, School of International Relations and Public Affairs, Fudan University, PRC.
Email: czuo@fudan.edu.cn
1001759IPS0010.1177/01925121211001759International Political Science ReviewZuo et al.
research-article2021
Original Research Article
278 International Political Science Review 44(2)
The modernization theory implies that a significant number of people need to make the transition
from poverty into the middle class before democratization or democratic consolidation can be
achieved; the social movement literature posits that the most deprived, once mobilized, will lead to
rebellion; and means-tested aid to impoverished families can increase voter turnout and help
incumbent executives maintain or build electoral support (Zucco, 2013). As the largest contributor
to the decline in poverty reduction worldwide, China has lifted an average of 13.7 million people
out of poverty every year since 2012.1 Does poverty reduction contribute to regime legitimacy, as
intended by national policymakers? Through what mechanism does poverty reduction affect politi-
cal support in a context without meaningful elections? Bridging the literature on poverty reduction
and political trust, this analysis considers these questions by examining the dynamics of trust in
local elected and appointed officials generated by the locally managed Targeted Poverty Alleviation
(TPA) program in China.
One strand of literature posits that policy benefits unequivocally enhance recipients’ political
support. In democracies, political parties more often target poor voters for electoral gains because
‘the incremental dollar matters more to them and thus they switch more readily in response to
economic benefits’ (Dixit and Londregan, 1996: 1137, 1143); autocratic leaders likewise distribute
social welfare selectively to gain the support or obedience of certain groups. For example, the
world’s largest means-tested welfare program, Minimum Livelihood Guarantee, or Dibao pro-
gram, in China (Gao, 2017), serves the function of targeting potential activists and controlling
society (Pan, 2020). By directly linking recipients’ well-being to local state actors, poverty allevia-
tion programs have the obvious potential to enhance political support among their beneficiaries, as
calculations of the material gains are a major source of political trust (Miller, 1974). In Mexico, the
long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) used the poverty relief program PRONASOL
to perpetuate its electoral monopoly. In distributing program benefits to municipalities, the PRI
diverted more funds to areas vulnerable to opposition entry and withdrew funds from localities
controlled by the opposition (Magaloni, 2006).
However, empirical studies in Latin America, Africa and Asia have yielded mixed evidence
regarding the impact of means-tested programs on political support. For example, Bruhn (1996)
argued that National Solidarity Program spending did not account for changes in political support
between 1988 and 1991 in Mexico. Camacho (2014) found that Peru’s Juntos program increased
trust in institutions related to program conditions among the beneficiaries, but decreased trust in
the institutions that channel grievances arising from exclusion from the program among
non-beneficiaries.
Recent research has stressed the role of on-the-ground delivery of policy benefits and the per-
ception of governance quality in moderating popular attitudes toward the poverty alleviation pro-
grams. Evans et al. (2019) showed that a conditional cash transfer program in Tanzania enhanced
trust in local elected officials, especially in settings when more village meetings are convened to
share information about policy implementation. Programs based on needs testing, compared with
universal programs, imply a greater scope for bureaucratic discretion and thereby ‘more readily
give rise to suspicions concerning poor procedural justice and arbitrary treatment’ (Kumlin and
Rothstein, 2005: 349). Locally managed poverty alleviation programs may be further subject to
corruption and elite capture (Han and Gao, 2019), thus leading citizens to perceive the process for
allocating benefits as politicized and unfair, which could lower political support. As shown in the
Zapatista rebellion, the collapse of the anti-poverty PRONASOL program into clientelistic relief
and rampant corruption drove protesters to the street.
This analysis contributes to the debate by explicitly testing the mechanisms through which
means-tested poverty reduction programs affect political support. Combining interview data and
analyses of an original survey, we find that beneficiaries of poverty reduction in China have a
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