Local Officials and Crisis Response in Non-Democratic Countries : How Career Concerns Affected Pandemic Controls in China

We find that local Chinese officials with stronger career concerns were more reluctant to impose COVID-19 lockdown policies. Local officials win promotions by posting strong economic growth numbers in their regions, but lockdowns can suppress growth. We show that local officials who would have more gains if promoted and were closer to a promotion opportunity – in particular, those appointed to their positions at a younger age, controlling for calendar age – were more likely to downplay the virus by avoiding or minimizing lockdowns. The sluggish response of prefectural governments continued even after the central government provided explicit warnings about the pandemic, effectively undermining the state's capacity in crisis response. Our study exposes the negative externalities in decentralized provision of public goods and services caused by local officials' political career concern, and it cautions against the narrative that authoritarian regimes are best suited to deal with unprecedented health crises due to their ability of aggressively mobilizing state resources