Institutional bindingness, power structure, and land expropriation in China

•Institutional bindingness is whether quasi-democratic institutions restrict ruling elites’ discretion in governance.•The consequences and sources of the variation in institutional bindingness are studied for Chinese village elections.•The bindingness of village elections is operationalized in terms of the power structure within village leadership.•The balance of power between Villagers’ Committees and Party branches affects land expropriation outcomes.•Village power structure is shaped by political bargaining between the local government and ordinary villagers. The prevailing argument that quasi-democratic institutions in authoritarian regimes improve governance outcomes hinges on the presumption that institutions empower non-state actors and constrain the discretionary power of ruling elites—a concept we call “institutional bindingness.” However, institutions are not always binding, and the degree of institutional bindingness varies across contexts. This article examines the bindingness of village elections in China. Through the lens of land expropriation in peri-urban villages and using survey data, we find that institutional bindingness—operationalized in terms of the power structure within village leadership—strongly shapes the processes and outcomes of land expropriations and therefore the quality of village governance. Moreover, village power structure depends on political bargaining between ordinary villagers and local states. Our findings contribute to the understanding of quasi-democratic institutions in authoritarian regimes by explicitly examining how institutional bindingness affects governance outcomes and how bindingness is endogenously determined.