5. Rightful Challengers: How Chinese Criminal Defense Lawyers Encourage Judge-Prosecutor Disagreement
• with Yue Hou
• Forthcoming in World Politics (scheduled for Vol. 78, no. 3, July 2026).
• Presented at 2023 APSA Annual Meeting, 2023 ALSA (Asian Law and Society Association) Annual Meeting, and other workshops by coauthor
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Appendix
Abstract
In autocracies, courts are often perceived as tools of the autocrats, with lawyers viewed as lacking influence. We reassess these assumptions by examining criminal defense lawyers as “rightful challengers” within China’s legal system. Analyzing an original dataset of drug cases in Chinese criminal courts from 2014 to 2018, we find that, when a lawyer is present, judges are three times more likely to reject prosecutors’ arguments and twice as likely to deviate from prosecutors’ sentencing recommendations. The deviation, on average, results in sentences that are over two additional months shorter. These findings suggest that lawyers can exert a substantial impact on judicial decisions by encouraging judge-prosecutor disagreement, particularly in less politically sensitive cases. Close examinations of lawyers’ arguments and original interviews reveal that the quality of defense is crucial for understanding lawyers’ effectiveness in influencing court decisions. These results highlight how seemingly powerless societal actors, like lawyers, can act as rightful challengers to powerful state actors within authoritarian regimes.
4. Performing Legality: When and Why Chinese Government Leaders Show Up in Court
• with Rachel Stern and Benjamin Liebman
• Online First at Journal of Chinese Political Science. 2024.
• Presented at 2022 WPSA Autocratic Politics Mini-Conference, UPenn CSCC Speaker Series
Website
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Abstract
Since 2015, Chinese government leaders have been required by law to appear in court when citizens sue their unit, or designate an employee to take their place. Conceptually, we frame this policy as a demand on leaders to “perform legality,” sacrificing their time to demonstrate how seriously the government takes legal proceedings. Empirically, we draw on an original dataset of 127,529 administrative lawsuits decided between 2015 and 2018 to understand how often government leaders appear in Chinese courtrooms, and for which kinds of cases. Overall, leaders attended 24.72 percent of cases. However, despite the State Council’s instructions to prioritize attendance in lawsuits that may spiral into protest or draw public attention, leaders are no more likely to attend cases involving multiple plaintiffs or repeat litigants. Rather, they appear more in cases in which plaintiffs are represented by lawyers. Despite leaders’ conflict avoidance, China continues to ask leaders to personally appear in court in contentious cases. This makes courts key players in General Secretary Xi Jinping’s drive to re-train the bureaucracy to take law more seriously.
3. At Your Own Risk: A Model of Delegation with Ambiguous Guidelines
• Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy (2022) 2(4): 483-508.
• Presented at 2021 APSA Formal Theory Virtual Workshop, 2018 New Faces in China Studies Conference, 2019 MPSA Annual Meeting, and the 2019 EITM Summer Institute.
Website
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Abstract
Contrary to the lessons of principal-agent models, Chinese leaders have often provided local officials with ambiguous policy guidelines that do not clarify the boundaries of discretion. While ambiguity can give local officials flexibility in policy implementation, it can also instill fear of punishment among possible transgressors and encourage preemptive self-censoring. Incorporating both perspectives, I develop a formal model that analyzes a situation in which ambiguity allows flexibility for certain types of local officials while intimidating others. I argue that central leaders use ambiguity as a screening tool to encourage only “competent” local officials—or those who have policy expertise for producing good outcomes—to choose a gray-area policy at their own risk, while deterring “incompetent” officials from doing so. I illustrate the model with the case of state-owned enterprise restructuring in China. The argument is broadly applicable to interactions between any upper- and lower-level actors in bureaucratic hierarchy.
2. Closing Open Government: Grassroots Policy Conversion of China’s Open Government Information Regulation and Its Aftermath
• with Rachel Stern, Benjamin Liebman and Xiaohan Wu
• Comparative Political Studies (2022) 55(2): 319-347.
Website
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Abstract
How and when do opportunities for political participation through courts change under authoritarianism? Although China is better known for tight political control than for political expression, the 2008 Open Government Information (OGI) regulation ushered in a surge of political-legal activism. We draw on an original dataset of 57,095 OGI lawsuits, supplemented by interview data and government documents, to show how a feedback loop between judges and court users shaped possibilities for political activism and complaint between 2008 and 2019. In contrast to the conventional explanation that authoritarian leaders crack down on legal action when they feel politically threatened, we find that courts minted, defined and popularized new legal labels to cut off access to justice for the minority of super-active litigants whose lawsuits had come to dominate the OGI docket. This study underscores the power of procedural rules and frontline judges in shaping possibilities for political participation under authoritarianism.
1. Understanding Experimentation and Implementation: A Case Study of China’s Government Transparency Policy
• with Kevin O’Brien
• Asian Survey (2021) 61(4): 591–614.
Website
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Abstract
Studies of local governance in China often point to nimble experimentation but problematic implementation. To reconcile these competing images, it is useful to clarify the concepts of experimentation and implementation and see how they unfolded in one policy area. The history of China’s Open Government Information (OGI) initiative shows that the experimentation stage sometimes proceeds well and produces new policy options, but may falter if local leaders are unwilling to carry out an experiment. And the implementation stage often poses challenges, but may improve if the Center initiates new, small-scale experiments and encourages local innovation. This suggests that the experimentation and implementation stages are not so different when officials in Beijing and the localities have diverging interests and the Center is more supportive of a measure than local officials. The ups and downs of OGI, and also village elections, can be traced to the policy goal of monitoring local cadres, the central-local divide, and the pattern of support and opposition within the state.
Standard Language, Propaganda, and Government Satisfaction under Authoritarianism
• Revise and Resubmit at British Journal of Political Science.
• Presented at 2023, 2024 APSA Annual Meeting (‘24 China mini-conference), Nanjing University
Abstract
Beyond its role in nation- and state-building, I argue that standard language promotion enables autocrats to increase citizens’ satisfaction with the government by expanding the reach of propaganda. Drawing on large-scale surveys supplemented by original interviews, I test this argument in China, which has successfully promoted a common language, putonghua, in recent decades. By leveraging cross-cohort, cross-locality variations in exposure to putonghua at school following a major language reform in 2001, I find that greater exposure to putonghua increases government satisfaction. Individual-level evidence highlights a potential mechanism: increased consumption of television political news, a key channel for state propaganda delivered exclusively in putonghua. This study has implications for state-society communications and authoritarian control.
