Decoding the Organizational Logic of the Neo-Leninist Party: A Study of the Colleague Network of the Chinese Communist Party’s 17th Central Committee

在本研究中，我通過對中國共產黨第十七屆中央委員之間的共事網絡的蒐集和分析，探索的是胡錦濤時代的黨國權力的集中化特徵。作為一個高度組織化的列寧式政黨，中國共產黨在21世紀初期依然保持了對中國的有效的威權統治，其政權的穩定和不穩定性是外界高度關注的焦點，但長期以來也因為資訊的不透明而被視為「黑盒子」。因為任何組織或者制度都是鑲嵌在社會關係中的，而組織內的共事關係是使組織作為組織運轉的重要社會關係，對共事網絡的研究有助於釐清中共作為一個菁英式政黨的組織邏輯。研究結果顯示，傳統的恩庇侍從、派系或者官僚模型對中共權力集中化的解釋都是有限的。在胡錦濤的第二屆中共中央總書記任期內，中共政治菁英的共事網絡中出現的是高度的團體與團體之間鑲嵌的狀況，結構洞大量地存在。而在控制了政治資歷變項的影響後，開放網絡中的社會資本對十七大政治菁英在十八大後擔任黨國的重要職位的機率有顯著的正向影響。社會鑲嵌應有助於解釋中共的威權韌性。Through collecting and analyzing the colleague network of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s 17th Central Committee, this research attempts to analyze the characteristic of the party state’s power centralization in the Hu Jintao era. As a highly organized Leninist party, the CCP still effectively maintains its authoritarian control of China at the beginning of the 21st century. The stability and instability of the regime has always been of great interest to outside observers, but its elite politics has always been seen as a “black box” because of its lack of transparency. Insofar as all organizations and institutions are embedded in social relations, and colleague relationships inside an organization are key social relationships that facilitate the organization to run as an organization, a study of the CCP’s colleague network would help to explicate the elitist party’s organizational logic. My finding suggests that classical models of patron-clientelism, factionalism, or bureaucracy provide only limited explanation of the CCP’s current form of power centralization. During Hu Jintao’s second term serving as the General Secretary of the Party, there exist a great amount of mutual embeddedness and structural holes among different groups inside the colleague network of the CCP’s political elites. After controlling the effect of political qualification variables, their amount of social capitals in open networks have significant positive correlation with their chance of occupying more advanced positions after the 18th Party Congress. Social embeddedness helps to explain the CCP’s authoritarian resilience