Research On The Rule-making Power Of Local Government

The third and fourth Plenary Session of the Eighteen in 2013 and 2014 put forward to expend the regional legislative body.The National People's Congress and it's Standing Committee passed the decision on Amending the Legislative Law of the People's Republic of China in 2015 after several times of review to the Legislative Law amendments(here after:The Decision).The modification of the rule-making authority of local governments is one of the important content of the new revised Legislative Law.The Legislative Law enlarges the legislative bodies to all the cities divided into districts,but also makes restrictions on the contents of regulations in the mean time.There are many reasons of Legislative Law to expend the regional legislative bodies,such as to encourage local initiative and enthusiasm,to achieve the modernization of national governance,to meet different needs of local development,and to make the local management more characteristic and so on.China is a developing country with vast landscape,but there are also large differences in regional distribution of resources,political and economic development.Expending the regional legislative power may help all localities to formulate more feasible and executive regulations according to their own local situations,so that to make all regions to regulate the societies more effectively.However,the administrative agencies are not legislative agencies.The powerful execution and compulsion of administrative agencies could easily put citizens' rights into danger.Although the Legislative Law puts restrictions on the content of local rules,adds two-year-period requirement to the temporary regulations,and forbids the legislative bodies to make regulations to reduce citizens' rights and add citizens'obligations without the basis of upper law while enlarges the regional legislative bodies,there are still some deficiencies need to be solved.The dissertation is divided into five parts.The first part details the content of modification of new revised Legislative law on the rule-making authority of local governments.The content could be divided into three aspects:the legislative bodies,limits on the legislative subjects,and limits on the period of temporary regulations.The second part is the analysis on the constitutionality of expending the rule-making authority of local governments.As for the questioning to the constitutionality of expending rule-making bodies,the dissertation firstly clarifies the historic development of the authority of local governments.And then demonstrates that it is constitutional to empower and enlarge the local governments to enact regulations from perspective of history and nature of Constitution.The third part is the analysis on the relevant provisions of rule-making power of local governments of Legislative Law.The dissertation points out that there are problems such as the ambiguity on the legislative content of local governments,the simpleness regarding to the existence of regulations before the revision of Legislative Law as well as the unclearness of legislative limits on the temporary rules,etc.The fourth part discusses the practical problems that enlarging the local rule-making body may cause.For example,the governments may still infringe citizens' rights.And the quality of local regulations are comparatively low,and the vague and conflict between the legislative rights of local government rules and local laws are still problematic.The final part puts forward relevant suggestions for four aspects,which are the limits of rule-making authority of local governments,the management of rules made before the new revised Legislative Law,the division of power between local government rules and local laws,and ways to improve the quality of local government rules to solve the problems mentioned above.