<p>Drawing on the attention-based view, we examine how political participation influences the decentralization of new ventures. Using a sample of 6,077 new ventures from a China’s nationwide survey, we find that political participation encourages entrepreneurs to allocate more managerial attention to external activities, which in turn induces their ventures to implement a more decentralized decision-making system. Moreover, entrepreneurs are more likely to allocate their attention to external activities when their ownership is low and government intervention is more prominent. This study makes several theoretical contributions to the research on the origin of new venture decentralization, the attention-based view, and the political participation literature.</p>