Calamities And Anomalies,Political Culture,and Institutional Change

Understanding the determinants of institutional change is one of the core research issues of political economy.Among the many factors influencing institutional change,the role of cultural belief and ideology cannot be ignored.In ancient China,"Zaiyi"(calamities and anomalies)were regarded as omens or condemnations of human affairs from Heaven,which had special political meanings.The Zaiyi culture built around this belief became the dominant political ideology after being absorbed and promoted by the dynasty,which had an important impact on the social development and institutional change in ancient China.Based on the theory of institutional change,combined with the research methods of cliometrics,this paper empirically examines the influence of Zaiyi culture on institutional reforms,the system of appointment and removal of officials,and Autocratic monarchy.The results show that:First of all,this paper takes the Northern Song Dynasty as an example to investigate the impact of Zaiyi political culture on institutional reform.Based on a theoretical framework of transaction cost,this paper argues that the impact of Zaiyi culture on institutional change is mainly reflected in the fact that "zaiyi" and"auspicious" impact can increase or reduce the cost of institutional change.Based on the representative auspicious and zaiyi of solar eclipses,the empirical test shows that the influence of the "auspicious" solar eclipse and the "zaiyi" solar eclipse on the reform of the Northern Song Dynasty is different.The former played a significant role in promoting the reform,while the latter played a restraining role.In addition,we find that the occurence of solar eclipse significantly increased the possibility of Prime Ministers replacement in the Northern Song Dynasty.This further proves that zaiyi shocks intensified the political struggle within the imperial court,increased the transaction cost,and thus had a negative impact on the institutional reform.Secondly,this paper takes the practice of "Sangong removed when zaiyi occured"in the Eastern Han Dynasty as an example to investigate the influence of zaiyi culture on the appointment and removal system of officials.Theoretical analysis shows that due to the lack of professional and institutionalized guarantee for the explanation of calamities and anomalies,the issue of responsibility attribution of zaiyi often falls into endless debate,and finally becomes a political struggle tool for those in power.The empirical shows that the occurrence of celestial events and natural disasters increased the probability of replacement of the highest government officials Sangong.Using Sangong individual level dataset,we find that the patterns in the data give support to the political instrument hypothesis.In the political struggle with the Consort clan and eunuchs,Sangong who had hostile political relationship with those in power would face higher political risk when calamities and anomalies occurred.Overall,the results suggest that during Eastern Han Dynasty,the zaiyi culture had turned into a useful instrument for political struggle between different factions and thus became an unstable factor in political operation.Finally,this paper studies the influence of zaiyi culture on the autocratic monarchy in ancient China.The strengthening of autocratic monarchy in Chinese history is a gradual process.This paper argues that under the background of disaster culture,zaiyi shocks impact has affected the balance of political power between the monarch and bureaucrats,constantly adjusted the power distribution between the monarch and ministers on the margin,and played a role in consolidating the imperial power and strengthening the autocratic monarchy to a certain extent.In this paper,we construct a panel data set of 69 major dynasties in history and use solar eclipse as exogenous shock for empirical test.The empirical results show that the possibility of abnormal abdication of ancient Chinese emperors decreased significantly with the appearance of solar eclipse.Compared with the non-Central Plains Dynasty,the influence of solar eclipse was mainly reflected in the Central Plains Dynasty which believed in the zaiyi culture.After decomposing the types of the emperor’s abnormal abdication,this paper finds that the solar eclipse impact significantly reduced the threat to the imperial power from the internal usurpers(ministers and clansmen),but had little impact on the threat from the outside(hostile regime).In addition,the effect of solar eclipse was more obvious in the early stage of emperor’s accession to the throne.These results show that disaster culture has indeed played a role in consolidating the autocratic monarchy in history.This study enriches and expands the literature on the relationship between cultural beliefs,ideology and institutional change.This paper focuses on the zaiyi culture,which is an important part of ancient Chinese Confucian ideology.With the help of exogenous calamities and anomalies,this paper systematically investigates the influence of zaiyi culture on the institutional change of ancient China.Secondly,this paper also provides a useful supplement to the literature on the economic and political consequences of natural events(such as climate change,natural disasters,disasters,etc.).In addition,the study of this paper also has some inspiration for some important issues in Chinese history,such as the relative change between imperial power and Prime Minister power,the long-term continuation of Chinese autocratic monarchy.In the past research,scholars rarely associate the above problems with the political culture of zaiyi.Through empirical research,this paper finds that the impact of disaster seriously weakens the prime minister’s power,changes the political balance between the monarch and bureaucrats,and thus helps to consolidate the imperial power.The findings of this paper not only contribute to a deeper understanding of the impact of ideological factors on institutional change,but also help to understand the unique historical process of China from a new perspective.