My research asks how authoritarian power travels through political hierarchies and institutions, reshaping not only who governs below the apex and how they govern but also the kind of state citizens encounter. I pursue this agenda through two related research programs: one examines how personalist power is transmitted and reproduced below the ruler, while the other investigates how authoritarian institutions organize state action and political control. China is the substantive center of both programs and the case from which I develop and assess broader comparative arguments.
My dissertation, Personalist Power Beyond the Inner Circle, treats personalization not simply as consolidation at the apex but as an organizational process that unfolds through the political hierarchy. Its three chapters trace how trusted agents reshape political selection, how less-connected officials adapt to concentrated power, and how empowered protégés use subnational propaganda institutions to reproduce leader-centered narratives.
Selecting for Restraint: Personalist Power and Delegated Political Selection
I develop a theory of delegated political selection under personalism: because rulers’ trusted agents gain little independent political credit from subordinates’ successes but remain exposed to blame for their failures, they select for restrained, controllable, and defensible governing styles.
Authoritarian Elasticity: How Autocracies May Effectively Mobilize for Crisis Management
We develop authoritarian elasticity to explain how high-capacity autocracies may sustain crisis mobilization by repurposing existing institutions, recalibrating their functions and intensity as conditions change, and scaling mobilization back when circumstances permit.
Trapped: Chinese Overseas Youth’s Structured Pragmatism Amid US–China Rivalry
We develop structured pragmatism to explain how Chinese students and young professionals in the United States navigate geopolitical and immigration uncertainty by investing in portable resources and preserving future options rather than committing to a fixed destination.
Adapting to Personalism: How Local Elites Respond to Power Personalization in China
I explain how local elites adapt when authoritarian power becomes personalized, arguing that heightened uncertainty makes visible loyalty a strategy for political security and advancement, especially among officials who lack indirect ties through the ruler’s protégés.
Centralizing the Narrative: How Protégés Construct Regime Personalization
I explain how leader-centered narratives are constructed below the national leadership, arguing that dependence and competition encourage protégés to signal loyalty through local propaganda and agenda-building and that these dispersed efforts can aggregate into a centralized political narrative.
Service as Surveillance: Local Intermediaries and Preemptive Control in China
We show how territorial intermediaries turn service into surveillance: routine assistance creates repeated contact, while local embeddedness makes information actionable. Across 2,967 Chinese counties and urban districts, grid introduction increases targeted administrative penalties while reducing criminal cases in the same domains, consistent with earlier, place-based intervention.
Equal Before the Measure: Shared Measurement and Perceived Fairness in an Unequal Order
I argue that perceived social fairness depends not only on how opportunities are distributed but also on the scope of evaluative inclusion—whether individuals in separate selection arenas are assessed through the same instrument.
Who Must Follow the Rules? Authoritarian Rule by Law and the Demand for Procedural Legality
I argue that when an authoritarian regime uses rule by law to deter citizens from circumventing its controls, citizens may become more insistent that the state follow its own rules in unrelated interactions. Rule by law may therefore generate the demand for the rule of law.
Born into Distrust: Targeted Repression and the Intergenerational Trust Deficit in Local Governance
I examine whether targeted political repression leaves an intergenerational trust deficit, shaping how descendants understand and evaluate local government long after the original episode of repression.
The Impact of Trade Conflicts on U.S. Tourist Demand for Travel to China: Evidence and Forecasting
Determinants of U.S. Tourist Demand for Travel to China: Evidence from a Bayesian-Regularized BP Neural Network