Tyler Jost

Abstract: When is China prone to miscalculate its relative strength or its adversary’s intentions? Since Xi Jinping’s rise to power, scholars and policymakers are increasingly concerned that erosion of collective leadership in China might lead to foreign policy blunders. This article instead finds that, historically, institutional miscalculation in China has stemmed from the relationship between political leaders and their bureaucratic advisers, rather than political accountability. It introduces a typology of political-bureaucratic relationships, which I term national security institutions, and develops a theory specifying that institutions restricting information flow and deliberation with military, diplomatic, and intelligence advisers make leaders prone to miscalculations that might have otherwise have been avoided. Two paired comparisons of decision-making under personalist (the 1962 Taiwan Straits Crisis and the 1969 Sino-Soviet Border Conflict) and collectivist