University of Wisconsin–Madison

Tag: China

Michelson (2007), “Lawyers, Political Embeddedness, and Institutional Continuity in China’s Transition From Socialism”

Posted on

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 …

Gallagher (2017), Authoritarian Legality in China: Law, Workers, and the State

Posted on

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 …

Wang (2024), “Embedded Supervision: China’s Prosecutorial Public Interest Litigation Against Government”

Posted on

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 …

Wang and Xia (2024), “State-Sponsored Activism: How China’s Law Reforms Impact NGOs’ Legal Practice”

Posted on

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 …

Kwong (2025). “The Legal Profession in Battle: Cause Lawyers Versus State-Embedded Lawyers in Hong Kong’s Democratization”.

Posted on

Kwong, Y. H. (2025). The Legal Profession in Battle: Cause Lawyers Versus State-Embedded Lawyers in Hong Kong’s Democratization. Social & Legal Studies, 34(4), 580-601. The existing literature has long recognized that cause lawyers play important roles in fighting for political justice. However, the implications of how the state responds to these lawyers have yet to be comprehensively …

Michelson & Li (2012). “Judicial performance without independence: the delivery of justice and political legitimacy in rural China”..

Posted on

Michelson, E., & Li, K. (2012, May). Judicial performance without independence: the delivery of justice and political legitimacy in rural China. In Prepared for workshop on works-in-progress on Chinese law. The debate over whether weak judicial independence undermines judicial performance and regime legitimacy in authoritarian contexts remains unresolved. Using survey data from 23 Chinese villages in …

Lai (2022), “Securitisation or Autocratisation? Hong Kong’s Rule of Law under the Shadow of China’s Authoritarian Governance.”

Posted on

Yan-Hao Lai, “Securitisation or Autocratisation? Hong Kong’s Rule of Law under the Shadow of China’s Authoritarian Governance.” Journal of Asian and African Studies, vol. 58, no. 1 (2022): 8-25. Summary: This article examines the nature of the legal system in Hong Kong and its process of autocratisation under the Chinese sovereign. This article suggests that, …

Joshua (2023), “Justifications of Repression in Autocracies: An Empirical Analysis of Morocco and Tunisia, 2000–2010.”

Posted on

Maria Joshua, “Justifications of Repression in Autocracies: An Empirical Analysis of Morocco and Tunisia, 2000–2010.” Contemporary Politics, vol. 30, no.1 (2023): 108–36 Summary: How do autocrats communicate about repression? Previous studies have analysed how autocratic officials justify the repression of large-scale protests to avoid backlash effects. However, we know much less about how everyday repression …

Li, Wang (2023), “Judicial Recentralization as Political Control: Evidence from the Judicial Leader Rotation in China.”

Posted on

Zeren Li, Zeyuan Wang, “Judicial Recentralization as Political Control: Evidence from the Judicial Leader Rotation in China.” Social Science Quarterly, vol. 104, no.4 (2023): 669–683.  Summary: This study analyzes how authoritarian leaders use the judicial system to solve the principal–agent problem in the government hierarchy. The authors argue that autocrats recentralize court personnel to enhance …

Li (2012), “The ‘Production’ of Corruption in China’s Courts: Judicial Politics and Decision Making in a One-Party State.”

Posted on

Ling Li, “The ‘Production’ of Corruption in China’s Courts: Judicial Politics and Decision Making in a One-Party State.” Law & Social Inquiry, vol. 37, no. 4 (2012): 848–77.  Summary: Despite its rampant presence, judicial corruption in China has often been regarded as the idiosyncratically deviant behavior of a few black sheep eluding prescribed judicial conduct. This …