Patronage networks and multitasking incentives: Evidence from local officials’ responses to public crises in China’s centralized bureaucracy

Multitasking agency problems affect government performance. While governments can give high-level authorities discretion to monitor agents’ multitasking performance, such “top-down” control could foster patronage-based relations throughout hierarchies, compounding multitasking problems. However, little research has examined the relationship between multitasking and patronage. We argue that patronage induces agents to prioritize tasks where their superiors face heightened “top-down” pressures while downplaying other tasks. Exploiting the staggered adoption of Community Stringent Measures (CSMs) across Chinese cities, we compare Chinese local officials’ COVID-19 responses based on city officials’ patronage connections to provincial superiors, who oversaw their performance and faced pressures to contain infections. CSMs in connected cities more substantially reduced virus infections compared to unconnected cities, but generated more pronounced human mobility reduction and citizen discontent, potentially hindering economic development and social stability. Our findings suggest that agents’ multitasking incentives are shaped by patronage connections within the centralized hierarchy.