Legal Pressure And Local Government's Response

The legalization of governance has become increasingly important since the 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party,especially the Fourth Plenary Session has decided to "promote the rule of law in an all-round way",while the legal transformation of governance in China has not been thoroughly studied.The existing research on local government and local governance mainly emphasizes the central-local or the state-society relationship under the logic of finance and personnel management,which includes various issues such as regional competition and economic growth,performance evaluation and promotion of cadres,policy formulation and implementation,policy pilots,ect.Different from the previous studies which widely criticize the local government's rampant violation of law or mainly focus on the local government's response to public opinion direcly or indirectly expressed by local citizens,this research focuses on the legal pressure the local governments face and their responses to the pressure in the context of comprehensively advancing the rule of law after the 18th CPC National Congress.In recent years,the central government has promoted the law enforcement reform within the administrative system and the reform of the administrative litigation system from top to the bottom,which constitutes the institutional basis and cause of legal pressure faced by the local government.The former is committed to promoting vertical restraint from the internal bureaucracy,while the latter aims to overcome the local government's intervention into the judiciary and impose horizontal constraints on the local government.Therefore,the local government's response to the legal pressure and the strategies and characteristics of its response depend both on the administrative pressure of fulfilling "central tasks" and the above two kinds of legal pressure.If the completion of administrative tasks means that the local government breaks through the legal boundaries,the horizontal and vertical legal pressure would push the local government to behave within the legal boundaries and to strike a balance between legal requirements and campaign-style law enforcement.This dissertation examines the local government's selective response to the legal pressure from the perspective of administrative litigation.Based on the evidence from the "Three Rectifications and One Demolition" policy implemented in Zhejiang Province,this research collects and uses the judicial judgment data from 2015 to 2017,as well as judicial proposals and administrative trial white papers.Descriptive statistical analysis shows that the township government and the Administrative Enforcement Bureau,as the grassroots-level law enforcement agencies,have been sued for the most times.And the violation of legal procedures and legal duties beyond the statutory power are the most common types sued by local citizens.An empirical study on the outcome of administrative litigation jurisdiction system reform has found that the jurisdiction system reform has significantly increased the losing ratio of administrative organs.The horizontal pressure of losing cases not only affects the administrative organs' public image,but also transforms into the vertical pressure of the evaluation of implementing rule of law and thus affects the performance of local cadres,enabling the local government to respond to the legal pressure.Further case studies reveal the strategies and characteristics of the local government's response to the legal pressure.The grass-roots level government's response not only differs across regions and departments(the willingness to respond to the legal pressure in areas and departments with greater administrative tasks is weaker than that with less administrative tasks),but also selective.That is,the willinginess to respond to legal requirements such as the appearance in court which do not conflict with "central tasks"is stronger than the willingness to respond to procedural requirements which hinder the implementation of administrative tasks.Although the local government's response to legal pressure is limited,the fact that the local government responds shows that the campaign-style governance with Chinese characteristics is to some extent subject to the rule of law and is experiencing a process of legalization.The legalization of campaign-style governance reflects the conflict and balance between the two logics of campaign-style governance and the rule of law.In this sense,the future of "governance with rule of law" depends upon the central government's comprehensive trade-offs between different goals such as development,adaptation,legitimacy,and social order.