Conditional Justice: Evaluating the Judicial Centralization Reform in China.

Abuse of power and corruption is prevalent in authoritarian countries. Does centralized management of courts serve to tie the hands of local bureaucrats? This article evaluates the effects of China's two waves of reform aimed to centralize the management of local courts. The authors randomly sampled...

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Published in:Journal of Contemporary China Vol. 30; no. 129; pp. 434 - 451
Main Authors: Zhou, Hui, Liu, Junqiang, He, Jiang, Cheng, Jianxin
Format: Article
Published: Taylor & Francis Ltd May2021
Subjects:
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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      dt: May2021
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        10.1080/10670564.2020.1827355
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        atl: Conditional Justice: Evaluating the Judicial Centralization Reform in China.
      aug:
        au:
          Zhou, Hui
          Liu, Junqiang
          He, Jiang
          Cheng, Jianxin
        affil:
          University of Houston, USA
          Sun Yat-sen University, China
          Jinan University, China
      su:
        China
        Despotism
        Political corruption
        Actions & defenses (Law)
        Courts
        Chinese politics & government, 2002-
      sug:
        subj:
          Despotism
          Political corruption
          Actions & defenses (Law)
          Courts
          China
          Courts
          Chinese politics & government, 2002-
      ab: Abuse of power and corruption is prevalent in authoritarian countries. Does centralized management of courts serve to tie the hands of local bureaucrats? This article evaluates the effects of China's two waves of reform aimed to centralize the management of local courts. The authors randomly sampled 3,993 adjudication documents from over 70,000 administrative litigation cases. Difference-in-differences estimations demonstrate that the reform does not improve civil actors' probability of winning administrative litigations. When the police department is sued, the plaintiff's odds of winning the litigation is 84.28 percent lower. Besides, a one unit increase in the defendant's rank relative to the court decreases the plaintiff's win odds by 42.99 percent. These findings reveal a logic of conditional justice and cast doubts on the effectiveness of China's legal reform.
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      doctype: Article
      src: R
    language: English
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