Why choose specialized courts? : a political analysis of China’s judicial reform (2013-2023)

Abstract

Since the judicial reform led by Xi Jinping in 2013 proposed to unify the power of personnel and budgetary management of courts below the provincial level to the provincial level, while establishing a mechanism for judicial jurisdiction separate from administrative regions, previous studies have examined the two parts of this reform separately, with little attention paid to the fact that it is a two-pronged initiative that targets judicial local protectionism. Specialized courts are identified in this dissertation as judicial organs that can meet both parts of the reform goal. This dissertation provides a comprehensive analysis of the role and challenges of specialized courts and quasi-specialized courts in China’s judicial reform, particularly in combating judicial local protectionism. It highlights the unique jurisdiction of these courts, which is centralized and detached from local politics, but also underscores the institutional challenges they face due to the lack of a complete legislative and administrative structure and the dispersion of personnel and budgetary management among different administrative levels. The article proposes a viable solution to these challenges by suggesting an integration of the specialized courts with corresponding personnel and budgetary management at the provincial level. This study goes beyond the assessment of past studies that Xi Jinping’s judicial reforms ended in failure by re-examining the two- pronged goal of China’s judicial reform that has been neglected in previous studies and recombining them in a synthesized institutional framework. The findings may challenge the application of the fragmented authoritarianism theory in China, suggesting that flaws in institutional design based on a legitimate goal may be the cause of the joint failure of central authority and local party-state, rather than the result of central-local tug-of-war. Moreover, by reassessing the reform goal of combating judicial local protectionism proposed by the CPC in 2013, this dissertation provides a set of institutional suggestions for China’s judicial reform, which is currently at a stalemate, in an effort to keep China’s judicial regional governance moving forward.