Sanctions on Local Government Officials: Evidence from China

Sanctions play a pivotal role in ensuring accountability among local government officials. The existing literature, however, falls short in characterizing sanction measures and examining how sanction decisions are made in practice. We address this critical research gap by leveraging an innovative data set encompassing all sanction announcements against local officials during the most recent public health crisis in China. Beyond a rich descriptive analysis of sanction measures, our empirical analysis consistently indicates that, at the city level, the application of sanctions follows the principle of “the nail that sticks out gets hammered down first”. At the individual level, we find that poor managerial performance and central government on-site inspections escalate the punitive degree of sanctions on senior local leaders, while political patronage appears to mitigate the severity of sanctions and potentially influence their political career.