Sword of Damocles hanging over grassroots cadres in China: Understanding the accountability in campaign-style enforcement

The ‘campaign-style enforcement’ is a forceful policy instrument employed by Chinese authorities to address emergencies and intractable issues. However, the accountability embedded in campaign-style enforcement is largely overlooked, leading to the unclear dynamics of political mobilization at the grassroots level. While prior studies suggest that cadres in China are primarily motivated by promotion opportunities based on their political performance, this study, through a grounded-theory approach involving 557 penalized cadres in Hubei Province, argues that grassroots cadres are more likely mobilized by the stringent accountability system rather than by career promotion. Furthermore, this research develops a theoretical framework to elucidate what conditions may trigger accountability and how it drives grassroots political mobilization in the campaign-style enforcement.