When Do Authoritarian Rulers Tie Their Hands: The Rise of Limited Rule of Law in Sub-National China.

Abstract

This dissertation is an empirical attempt to explain the variation in the rule of law in China at the national, provincial, prefectural, and county levels across mainland China’s 31 provinces over time.

This research tracks the development of China’s formal legal institutions across space and over time, arguing that the variation of the rule of law at the sub-national level in China is caused by the diversification of ownership structure in the local economy. In places where there is a large share of foreign invested enterprises from outside the “China circle,” local governments are more likely to finance courts and courts are less likely to be corrupt; in places where there is a large share of state-owned enterprises, domestic private enterprises, and foreign enterprises from within the “China circle,” local governments are less likely to finance courts and courts are more likely to be corrupt.

This dissertation also argues that the Chinese Communist Party and governments at various levels only seek to improve judicial impartiality in the commercial realm. Through the nomenclatura system and the financial system, the Party and government still hold sway over the judiciary to limit citizens’ opportunities to challenge the state in the political and civil realms. As a consequence, the incentive to provide credible commitment to foreign investors contributes to the rise of a limited form of the rule of law.

This dissertation tests these propositions both qualitatively and quantitatively. On the qualitative side, the researcher conducted over a hundred interviews with Party and government officials, judges, investors, scholars, litigants, and ordinary citizens in 7 provinces in 2007 and 2010. On the quantitative side, the researcher compiled and analyzed three original data sets. The first data set includes survey data of ordinary citizens across mainland China’s 102 counties in 2003 matched by yearbook statistics on the local political economy. The second combines business survey data in mainland China’s 120 cities in 2005 and yearbook statistics of the local economy. The third is comprised of variables on provincial government budgets and other demographic and economic aspects of mainland China’s 31 provinces over the period of 1995-2006.