Ya-Wen Lei. The Contentious Public Sphere: Law, Media, and Authoritarian Rule in China. Princeton, U.S.: Princeton University Press, 2018. This book explores how China’s authoritarian state, through law, media, and the Internet, has unintentionally fostered a growing and contentious public sphere. Despite censorship and civil society restrictions, this public sphere has enabled citizens to engage …
Ethan Michelson. “Lawyers, Political Embeddedness, and Institutional Continuity in China’s Transition From Socialism.” The American Journal of Sociology, vol. 113, no. 2 (2007): 352–414. This article examines how Chinese lawyers navigate professional challenges by developing and relying on political embeddedness, defined as their bureaucratic, instrumental, or personal ties to state actors. Drawing on data from …
Mary E. Gallagher. Authoritarian Legality in China: Law, Workers, and the State. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2017. This book explores how authoritarian regimes may adopt democratic legal institutions to reinforce their rule, using China’s protective labor laws and judicial access as a case study. It analyzes how Chinese workers mobilize these laws and under …
Lynette J. Chua. “Pragmatic Resistance, Law, and Social Movements in Authoritarian States: The Case of Gay Collective Action in Singapore.” Law & Society Review, vol. 46, no. 4 (2012): 713-748. This article examines how legal strategies shape advocacy under authoritarian rule through a qualitative study of Singapore’s gay movement. It analyzes how activists engage in …
Yueduan Wang. “Embedded Supervision: China’s Prosecutorial Public Interest Litigation Against Government.” Regulation & Governance, (2024): 1-41. This study challenges the assumption that diminished institutional autonomy necessarily weakens legal oversight in authoritarian regimes. Focusing on prosecutor-led public interest litigation in China, it shows that legal professionals can, under certain conditions, enhance their influence over state agencies …
Yueduan Wang and Ying Xia. “State-Sponsored Activism: How China’s Law Reforms Impact NGOs’ Legal Practice.” Law & Social Inquiry, vol. 49, no. 1 (2024): 451–77. This study explores how attorneys and law-related NGOs navigate legal opportunities in China amid ongoing democratic backsliding. Following “law-based governance” reforms that professionalized the judiciary, expanded legal aid, and granted …
This article examines the evolving stance of Chinese administrations towards judicial autonomy and legal activism over the past two decades.
This chapter explores how rapid economic growth and legal reforms in China have reshaped the dissident movement by creating new political and legal spaces for rights assertion.
This chapter examines Turkey’s transformation from a hopeful democratic state to a key example of democratic backsliding under the Justice and Development Party (AKP).
In the face of growing repression in China, some lawyers, along with pastors and NGOs, are navigating authoritarian constraints not through resistance but through strategic accommodation.