Political Resources and Divergent Court Empowerment in China: A Subnational Comparison

Abstract

The cities of Guiyang and Kunming are known among legal scholars, practitioners, and policy makers for hosting two of China’s earliest specialized environmental tribunals, following serious water contamination in the two cities. However, the judicialization of environmental protection appears to be relatively nominal in Kunming and substantial in Guiyang. Why? We contend that, at a critical juncture, different political resources available to local leaders—including their past networks and experiences—led them to implement different strategies to deal with these crises. Under similar conditions, different political resources thus led to divergent outcomes of judicial empowerment. We use process tracing to describe the causal sequence in the adoption and application of policies of judicialization. Whether courts are empowered to operate proactively or conservatively is the result of the strategies of local actors in response to the policy agenda set forth by political leaders and constrained by political leaders’ available political resources. This study contributes to existing theories of court empowerment in authoritarian regimes that have largely relied on national-level or socioeconomic factors. Through a controlled subnational comparison in China, this article provides an alternative theory of divergent practices of court empowerment.

Quarantined judicial expansion: The environmental legal entrepreneurship of Chinese courts, procuratorates, and NGOs

“…This summary indicates a resource‐centric pattern of judicial expansion. Based on a comparison of environmental adjudication in Guiyang and Kunming, Wang and Liang concluded that the individual party‐state leader's political resources—such as their past networks and experiences—determine whether judicialization in their jurisdiction is nominal or substantial (Wang & Liang, 2019). Taking the argument a step further, this study suggests that a key determining factor for judicial empowerment is the resources available to various types of legal actors, such as NGOs, procuratorates, and courts.…”

“…Such differences can be largely attributed to China's relatively closed national political system, under which no decisions made at the highest levels can be challenged in court-neither de jure nor de facto. Nevertheless, China's more localized pattern of judicialization fits the generally accepted definition of the term-the "delegation of power to courts by political and administrative actors" (Hirschl, 2007;Wang & Liang, 2019). Furthermore, it is arguably no less significant than the judicialization of higher politics in many other authoritarian countries, a fact highlighted by China's relative success at boosting its "rule of law" ratings in the past decade (Wang, 2020c).…”

“…For instance, Alex Wang and Gao observe that Chinese local courts had developed novel rules on standing, jurisdiction, and remedies of environmental PIL years before the promulgation of relevant national laws (Wang & Gao, 2010). A closer look by Juan Wang and Liang finds that regional variations of similar judicial innovations could be partially attributed to differences in the political resources available to local leaders, such as past networks and experiences (Wang & Liang, 2019).…”

Institutional proximity and judicial corruption: A spatial approach

“…The agenda and outreach activities of a court generally follow the local government's broader policy agenda. For instance, when a local government emphasizes innovation and prioritizes environmental protection, the local court may propose a pioneering environmental tribunal and collaborate with the Bureau of Environmental Protection (Wang & Liang, 2019).…”

Who is a PRC user? Comparing Chinese social media user agreements

“…As part of legal reform the government directs decision-making by mostly local officials to courts, not allowing party officials to intervene in judicial processes (Liebman, 2017). Wang and Liang (2019) demonstrate that government officials also empower courts to effectively respond to environmental protection in Guiyang. The Chinese political system is therefore not characterized by a fully centralized hierarchical structure; instead, China experts have long emphasized the fragmented nature of the Chinese authoritarian state promoting legal reforms for more effective governance (see, for example, Lieberthal and Lampton, 1992).…”