| Since 1979, the process of lawmaking has become an increasingly important--and surprisingly contentious--part of the overall Chinese "policy-making" process requiring serious scholarly attention. Taking as its inspiration classic American politics studies of lawmaking, this study asks "How does a bill become a law in Post-Mao China?" and "What impact do the politics of the lawmaking process have on the substance of Chinese law?" At the core of this dissertation is an in-depth comparative case study of two major laws: one on enterprise bankruptcy, one on state factory management. Data are drawn from interviews with Chinese officials and scholars involved in the lawmaking process, as well as Chinese and English language documentary and press sources. The study also seeks to illuminate the roles and power sources of the various Communist Party, State Council, and National People's Congress (NPC) organs involved in drafting major pieces of legislation.; The study analyzes the lawmaking process through four theoretical models of the policy-making process. Rejecting the traditional "command model" of lawmaking politics--that "the Party controls the legislature"--the study argues that the Party leadership is no longer sufficiently unified to reach lawmaking decisions within Party fora, and increasing resorts to the lawmaking system as an important adjunct political battleground. Chinese lawmaking politics are, instead, better understood through three other policy-process models: those emphasizing "leadership struggle" and "organizational politics"; as well as Cohen, March, and Olsen's "garbage can model" of organizational choice. The lawmaking process interweaves three major policy-making "arenas"--the Party Center, State Council, and the NPC--each incorporating distinctive political processes and unique, though overlapping, constellations of political actors.; The study closes by questioning whether or not the Chinese lawmaking system is too fragmented and conservative to meet its major current task: developing the legal infrastructure essential to China's economic structural reform. |
