The Legal Maladies of 'Federalism, Chinese-Style'

Chapter 4 in Weitseng Chen (ed.) The Beijing Consensus? How China Has Changed the Western Ideas of Law and Economic Development and Global Legal Practices (Cambridge University Press), pp 95-118

28 Pages Posted: 2 Oct 2016 Last revised: 22 Jun 2017

See all articles by Wei Cui

Wei Cui

University of British Columbia (UBC), Faculty of Law

Date Written: December 25, 2014

Abstract

In the study of Chinese law, the theme of “central-local relations” has rarely been the focus of theoretical, empirical, or even doctrinal analysis. Instead, scholars have privileged judicial institutions, general discourses about the rule of law, and their relations to authoritarianism as themes for inquiry. This is of course not unlike the study of legal systems elsewhere: the literatures on federalism and on the rule of law, while each vast in themselves, rarely overlap.

In this chapter, I summarize arguments I make elsewhere that the allocation of power and responsibilities among different tiers of government has in fact had major influences on the rule of law in China. Specifically, extraordinary legislative centralization has resulted in a radical short supply of legal rules in virtually all areas of governance. Meanwhile, the extraordinary decentralization of policy implementation has directly reduced compliance with and enforcement of the laws, and indirectly undermined the development of legal institutions and the legal profession. The adverse consequences of legislative centralization and enforcement decentralization are also mutually reinforcing. Overall, these twin arrangements may have held back the development of the rule of law to a greater degree than even China’s authoritarian government itself would like.

Keywords: federalism, Chinese law, the supply of law, Law on Legislation, decentralized enforcement, rule of law, law and social order

JEL Classification: K10, K20, N40, N45

Suggested Citation

Cui, Wei, The Legal Maladies of 'Federalism, Chinese-Style' (December 25, 2014). Chapter 4 in Weitseng Chen (ed.) The Beijing Consensus? How China Has Changed the Western Ideas of Law and Economic Development and Global Legal Practices (Cambridge University Press), pp 95-118, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2843308

Wei Cui (Contact Author)

University of British Columbia (UBC), Faculty of Law ( email )

1822 East Mall
Vancouver, BC V6T1Z1
Canada

HOME PAGE: http://https://allard.ubc.ca/about-us/our-people/wei-cui

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