Embedded institutionalization: Sustaining rural tax reform in China

Sustaining early achievements in rural tax reforms and peasants' burden reduction is a major challenge facing Chinese leaders. Theoretical discussions over institutional change have noted the propensity of new-found changes to relapse, short of processes institutionalizing the changed, new order. Drawing from the experience of a Hubei county, the paper explores how the Chinese rural tax reform may be sustained, and its achievements protected, through innovative changes in another institutional field: the personnel. Against conventional wisdom on the role of downsizing in government reforms, the paper argues that the crux lies with the performance of government officials, not their numbers or payroll size per se, and thus the importance of reforms targeting the former. © 2006 Taylor & Francis.