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When Do Chinese Subnational Governments Make Law?, Wei Cui, Jiang Wan
When Do Chinese Subnational Governments Make Law?, Wei Cui, Jiang Wan
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How often does law get made in China, and what kinds of law? We construct a dataset on subnational lawmaking to address these questions. The dataset builds on a basic insight: Chinese politicians choose among three types of instruments to implement policy—statutes, regulations, and informal policy directives (IPDs). IPDs are easier to promulgate than statutes and regulations, and the fact that they lack the force of law rarely impedes enforcement. Why then do politicians make law at all? Several findings shed light on this puzzle. First, the choice between formal lawmaking and IPDs depends on the policy subject. Second, provinces …
When Do Chinese National Ministries Make Law?, Wei Cui
When Do Chinese National Ministries Make Law?, Wei Cui
All Faculty Publications
This paper documents some basic empirical facts about the issuance of formal regulations (FRs) and informal policy directives (IPDs) by China’s national ministries and agencies from 2000 to 2014. Prior scholarship (e.g. Cui 2011, Howson 2012) depicts specific instances of Chinese national agencies announcing substantive new policies (many ultra vires by statutory standards) through IPDs. I use FR and IPD quantities as measures of the agencies’ propensity to resort to legal as opposed to non-legal, merely bureaucratic mechanisms for announcing policy. I find significant variations across agencies in the quantities of FRs issued, both in absolute terms and relative to …