The top-heavy shape of authoritarian bureaucracy: evidence from Russia and China
| Published date | 01 September 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00208523211058865 |
| Author | Tao Li,Zhenyu M. Wang |
| Date | 01 September 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
The top-heavy shape of
authoritarian bureaucracy:
evidence from Russia and
China
Ta o L i
University of Macau, Macau
Zhenyu M. Wang
University of Macau, Macau
Abstract
The prevalence of top-heavy bureaucracies in non-democracies cannot be explained by
the theories of Parkinson, Tullock, Niskanen, or Simon or by classical managerial
theories. When bureaucracy positions carry rents, the competition for promotion
becomes a rent-seeking process. Borrowing the career-tournament theory framework
from managerial scholarship, we argue that top-heavy bureaucracy resembles a tourna-
ment with too many finalists. When rent is centralized at the top (i.e. power centraliza-
tion), as is the case in many non-democracies, the optimal bureaucracy should be top-
heavy, accommodating and encouraging relatively more finalists at the top to compete
for the final big prize. We provide suggestive evidence by analyzing ministry organiza-
tions in China (1993–2014) and Russia (2002–2015). After some fluctuations, the
shape of Russian ministries eventually converged with that of China. In the steady
state, their ministry shapes are far more top-heavy than what is prescribed by managerial
theories. At the micro-level, ministry power centralization, measured by the perceived
influence of the ministers, is correlated with ministry top-heaviness in Russia.
Points for practitioners
Our theory suggests that a top-heavy authoritarian bureaucratic structure naturally fol-
lows from a back-loaded sequential career tournament and an effort-maximizing bureau-
cratic leader. Our findings also suggest that Chinese and Russian ministries both
converge to a highly top-heavy structure in the long run. We demonstrate that the
Corresponding author:
Tao Li, University of Macau, Avenida da Universidade, Taipa, Macau, China.
Email: litao@post.harvard.edu
Article
International
Review of
Administrative
Sciences
International Review of Administrative
Sciences
2023, Vol. 89(3) 703–721
© The Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/00208523211058865
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top-heavy structure first arose during the planned-economy experiment in the Soviet
Union. Our research sheds new light on public-sector reforms that aim to reduce bur-
eaucracy top-heaviness in autocracies.
Keywords
top-heavy bureaucracy, communist legacy, career tournament, China, Russia
Introduction
Bureaucracies in authoritarian regimes are often highly top-heavy. We define the span of
control (SOC) as the number of subordinates under one superior. We call a bureaucracy
top-heavy if the SOC is relatively wider at the top of the hierarchy. Consider China, for
example. There are usually so many vice ministers that the minister’s SOC (i.e. the
number of vice ministers) is much wider than the average SOC of a vice minister (i.e.
the number of department heads).
1
In Nunberg’s (1999) words, there are too many
“chiefs”directing too few “Indians.”As “chiefs”usually enjoy discretionary power and
extravagant lifestyles, such obvious inflation of their numbers invariably inflames public
discontent, which has found its way into media outlets in China, as well as many other
countries with a communist or authoritarian legacy, such as Bulgaria, Kosovo, Poland,
Ukraine, the Dominican Republic, Armenia, Libya, Zambia, and Vietnam.
2
The SOC is a classic topic of managerial theories (for a comprehensive survey of
earlier studies, see van Fleet and Bedeian 1977), and it has also become a useful dimen-
sion when studying public bureaucracies empirically (Kim, 2016; Meier and Bohte,
2003; Theobald and Nicholson-Crotty, 2005). A top-heavy organizational structure in
authoritarian bureaucracies, if substantiated, clearly defies the standard prescriptions
that SOC should either remain constant or increase when one moves down the levels
of the hierarchy (Gulick, 1937; Williamson, 1967). Such a normative prescription
dates back at least to Sir Ian Hamilton, who developed the concept of SOC a century ago.
The influential theories of Tullock (1965, 1974) and Niskanen (1971) on bureaucra-
cies—being developed in the context of the United States—focused on the overall size
of the bureaucracy rather than its SOC. The focus seems to be mis-placed. The overall
federal employment has not changed much in 35 years (Niskanen, 2012). On the other
hand, many policy observers perceived bureaucracy top-heaviness to be a more serious
public issue in America.
3
There are two existing explanations of bureaucracy top-heaviness, neither of which
can easily explain away our puzzle. Parkinson (1957) suggested that declining bureaucra-
cies may become more top-heavy, which was furthered by Breton and Wintrobe (1979)
by modeling bureaucrats as power-maximizing. Yet top-heavy authoritarian bureaucracy
appears to be a persistent problem. The convergence results in our paper will further sub-
stantiate this intuition. Simon (1976) provided a more systematic argument, which was
formalized in Qian’s (1994) agency model of hierarchy. According to Simon and
Qian, there is a tradeoff between SOC and the number of tiers in a hierarchy—
704 International Review of Administrative Sciences 89(3)
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