Factions in Nondemocracies: Theory and Evidence from the Chinese Communist Party

This paper investigates theoretically and empirically the factional arrangements and dynamics within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the governing political party of the People's Republic of China. Our empirical analysis ranges from the end of the Deng Xiaoping era to the current Xi Jinping presidency and covers the appointments of both national and provincial officials. We present a set of new empirical regularities within the CCP and a theoretical framework suited to model factional politics within single-party regimes.