The Personnel Foundation of China's Political-Legal System

• In Event: Judicial Politics of China

Abstract

Although earlier research reports that various biases exist in China's political-legal system that governs the country's police, courts, and procuratorates, recent data show that people's trust in the system has been enhanced after 2017. This article explores the personnel foundation for improved political-legal performance with an original dataset on provincial political-legal officials from 1994 to 2022. Our analysis reports that, first, a clear delocalized trend that these officials have less experience working in the assigned province after 2017, while their experience in the central government and other regions has become longer. Second, chief officials of police, court, and procuratorate have become more professionalized after 2017, as evidenced by their more extensive work experience in their sub-field. Finally, with the case study of provincial procuratorates, we also find that delocalized and professionalized officials correlate with better agency performance. These results deepen our understanding of China's political-legal system and central-local relationship.

Authors

• Zhenhuan Lei, University of Wisconsin, Madison

• Yishuang Li, New York University

• Tianyang Xi, Peking University