Leadership is a critical determinant of university performance. While much attention has been given to the personal traits of university leaders, the differences in leaders' political capital are largely neglected. Grounded in the framework of power relations in the management domain and contextualised in Chinese elite universities, the study has hypothesised and corroborated that the political capital imbalance between the party secretary and the president, the two top university leaders, adversely impacts the university's innovation performance, which is reflected by academic publications. However, this adverse effect would be attenuated if the president would be recruited externally. The study provides a new explanation of why political capital may not facilitate university innovation as expected while challenging the generalizability of shared governance logic as developed in US institutions of higher learning. The findings further enrich the university leadership literature by unveiling the impacts of cooperation and governance arrangements and underscoring the benefits of recruiting outsiders to enhance university innovation.