Yueduan Wang, “The More Authoritarian, the More Judicial Independence? The Paradox of Court Reforms in China and Russia.” University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, Vol. 22, no. 2 (2020): 529-560.
Summary: Drawing conclusions largely from democracies, existing theories often positively associate judicial independence with political competition. This Article argues that a negative relationship exists in some authoritarian or hybrid regimes that prefer independent courts: political competition reduces a regime’s control over local agents, decreasing its ability to protect the judiciary from external intervention. To test this hypothesis, the Article compares China’s ongoing judicial reforms with similar reforms in Russia, which were both aimed to make courts more independent from local elites. However, while both achieved some success in cutting formal ties between frontline judges and powerful local actors, informal channels for exercising extrajudicial influence remain available in both countries. Russian President Vladimir Putin failed to suppress these channels in part because he was dependent upon local elites’ support in elections. China’s “advantage” of being unconstrained by democratic formalities, however, allowed President Xi Jinping to better control the behavior of local officials and court leaders, significantly reducing external court interference. Consequently, China’s judicial reforms seem closer to achieving limited judicial independence than their Russian counterparts.