Governing the 'Constitutional Vacuum' - Federalism, Rule of Law, and Politburo Politics in China

China Law and Society Review 1 (2019) 1-40

40 Pages Posted: 18 Oct 2019

See all articles by Ling Li

Ling Li

University of Vienna - Department of East Asian Studies

Wenzhang Zhou

affiliation not provided to SSRN

Date Written: October 9, 2019

Abstract

By focusing on the underlit corners of authoritarian governance in China, this article challenges the thesis that constitutions matter to authoritarian regimes because they provide solutions for problems of governance. We argue to the contrary: the constitution appeals to the Chinese Communist Party (the Party or the CCP) because it does not provide solutions to fundamental issues of governance. Instead, such issues are kept out of the constitution so that they can be addressed by the Party through other regulatory mechanisms outside of the constitutional realm. In support of our thesis, we provide a unique review of the most up-to-date authoritative research on three key constitutional issues: central-local relations, party-state relations and power relations in the Politburo. These three issues correspond to three distinctive fields in China studies that were treated only in isolation but here we consider them together under the single framework of authoritarian constitutional governance.

Keywords: authoritarian constitutionalism, rule of law, Chinese Communist Party, authoritarian governance, authoritarian resilience, federalism, single party-state, Xi Jinping

Suggested Citation

Li, Ling and Zhou, Wenzhang, Governing the 'Constitutional Vacuum' - Federalism, Rule of Law, and Politburo Politics in China (October 9, 2019). China Law and Society Review 1 (2019) 1-40, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3466781

Ling Li (Contact Author)

University of Vienna - Department of East Asian Studies ( email )

Campus-Altes AKH
Spitalgasse 2, Hof 2, Eingang 2.3
Wien, 1090
Austria

Wenzhang Zhou

affiliation not provided to SSRN

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