Career networks, bureaucratic authority, and political selection

<title>Abstract</title> <p> We examine which observable features of career networks are associated with selection into administrative elite positions when loyalty, factional support, and sponsorship are not directly observable. Using position-level career histories for bureau-level Chinese officials from 1979 to 2020, we construct record-based measures of co-service networks, graded authority-weighted co-service exposure, and threshold exposure through documented co-service records to counterparts holding provincial-ministerial or higher offices as of the preceding year. High-authority exposure through qualifying co-service records exhibits the largest positive standardized coefficient in the joint specification and remains positive across the principal specifications. When the separately constructed authority components enter jointly, formal-rank exposure retains a positive association, while exploratory decompositions yield the largest high-authority-reach point estimates for longer-standing and cross-province components. These patterns are consistent with high-authority reach marking career networks that had previously received favorable organizational screening. We contribute to the political economy of bureaucracy by showing that public career trajectories contain information consistent with organizational screening within a nonmarket hierarchy, and by distinguishing graded authority-weighted exposure from threshold exposure through qualifying co-service records to counterparts holding provincial-ministerial-or-higher offices, both measured from counterpart offices observed in the preceding year. <bold>JEL Classification</bold> : D72, D73, D85, H83, P26 </p>