Interview with Jérôme Doyon, Junior Professor at the CERI
Jérôme Doyon joined Sciences Po’s Centre for International Studies in January 2023. His research focuses on Chinese politics and foreign policy with a specific interest in the inner working of the Party-State apparatus and its exportation beyond Chinese borders, as well as elite politics, political youth organizations, and the management of ethnoreligious minorities. He answers our questions about his career, research interests and current projects.
What has been your academic career to date, and what are your current research themes?
I began my academic trajectory at Sciences Po, from the undergraduate to doctoral level, laying the foundations for my training in the social sciences and my interest in Chinese politics. I then spent a few years at Columbia University as part of the joint PhD programme with Sciences Po. This gave me the opportunity to learn a different way of approaching political science, one that is more quantitative and positivist. This forced me to question, develop, and, above all, better defend my own approach, which is quite influenced by the French political sociology. After defending my PhD in 2016 (Rejuvenating Communism: the Communist Youth League as a political promotion channel in post-Mao China, under the supervision of Françoise Mengin and Andrew James Nathan ), I spent several years between the United Kingdom and the United States, taking up various positions, at the School of Oriental and African Studies, Oxford, Harvard, and the University of Edinburgh. These experiences enabled me to engage with various academic communities and to develop my research on the evolution of the Chinese party-state.
I am interested in how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) works: its internal networks, organisational discipline, and mechanisms for maintaining the loyalty of its members; its relations with different sections of society, in particular the strategies for surveilling, controlling, and co-opting ethnic and religious minorities, students, and the diaspora; and the deployment of its modes of operation beyond China’s borders.
How and why did you come to work on China?
I have to say that while I was already drawn to the Chinese language and culture for personal reasons, Sciences Po played a significant role in connecting me with the Chinese world. It was during my first year at Sciences Po that I started to learn Chinese. An exchange year at Peking University enabled me to deepen my knowledge and experience of the country. I went on to carry out my first fieldwork as part of the master’s degree specialising in Asian politics. During my PhD, I also spent a year as a visiting researcher at Tsinghua University. This affiliation provided me with unique access to the field. It also enabled me to build links with Chinese political scientists and sociologists, particularly in Tsinghua’s political science department, which was an enclave of relative freedom within the university. Although the restrictions imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic and the political tightening have brought things to a halt, forcing me to study Chinese politics from a distance, I am now returning to fieldwork.
Can you briefly tell us about your book Rejuvenating Communism: Youth Organizations and Elite Renewal in Post-Mao China ?
My book, Rejuvenating Communism: Youth Organizations and Elite Renewal in Post-Mao China (published in 2023 by the University of Michigan Press), starts from an observation: despite the many career opportunities offered by a liberalised labour market, for young Chinese graduates, working for their government remains one of the most coveted career paths. What drives these young Chinese to embark on a long-term career within the party-state? This question is central to our understanding of the Chinese regime’s ability to renew its elite and survive. To answer this question, my fieldwork focused on the early stages of political professionalisation in the youth organisations of the Chinese Communist Party: explaining how these structures select and “cultivate” future officials as soon as they enter university; how these recruits are gradually transformed by this foundational political experience, developing both a taste for a political career and embryonic political networks; and how these processes contribute to the homogeneity of political recruitment in China (women, in particular, are marginalised very early on).
Overall, this book sheds light on the mechanisms that enable the Chinese Communist Party to renew its ranks by attracting young graduates, and to maintain the cohesion of its political elites. In particular, I highlight the role played by social and symbolic factors in the development of political commitment in an authoritarian context.
What are your current projects and what do you wish to focus on in the next few years?
I intend to continue my work on the Chinese Communist Party, particularly by looking at its transnationalisation. This is the first time that a political party has become so globalised, with so many resources and without relying on the intermediary of local parties as in the days of the Communist International. In this context, I am studying the way in which the Chinese Communist Party is exporting its organisational methods and political practices marked by opacity, co-optation, and strict organisational discipline in order to promote an international environment favourable to China’s rise.
Are you involved in collective projects?
My aim is to help build up a research community, at Sciences Po and beyond, on Chinese politics, but also, more broadly, on the politics of authoritarian regimes. This is why, with colleagues from a variety of institutions and disciplines, we recently set up a thematic group within the French Political Science Association called “Democracies, Authoritarianism(s) and Illiberalism(s)”.
Interview by Corinne Deloy.
