The Judicial Cadre Evaluation System in China: From Quantification to Intra-State Legibility

Abstract

Performance evaluation systems fundamentally shape the behavior of Chinese judges, but scholarship on the concrete implementation of these institutions is scarce. Relying on nearly 15 months of fieldwork in 6 cities in China, we explain how the judicial cadre evaluation system, as unified by the 2011 Guiding Opinion of the Supreme People’s Court, has been implemented. Over 30 indices quantitatively measure Chinese courts’ “fairness” (gongzheng 公正), “efficiency” (xiaolü 效率), and “impact” (xiaoguo 效果), incentivizing court leaders to pressure their subordinate judges to resolve disputes as quickly as possible without unduly angering litigants or other actors. Under the hyperquantified conditions of cadre evaluation, systemic praising and shaming bring about what we call “intra-state legibility,” leading to a variety of informal worker reactions to these tactics. This study not only uses interviews and new documentary evidence to add necessary detail to our understanding of cadre evaluation systems, it also engages debates in comparative law and politics regarding bureaucratic influence on authoritarian judicial behavior.

Keywords: China, rule of law, judicial behavior, cadre evaluation, judicialization, rule by law, institutional incentives, quantification, legibility