Can Juries Legitimize the Authoritarian Judiciary? A Survey Experiment from China

• In Event: Authoritarian Statecraft 2.0

Abstract

In democratic societies, the jury system addresses the counter-majoritarian problem, yet its role in authoritarian regimes remains underexplored. In 2018, the Chinese government formalized the lay assessor’s system, a jury-like institution, in court proceedings with the stated goals of promoting democratic participation, enhancing justice, and improving judicial legitimacy. We study whether exposure to the lay assessor’s system enhances judicial legitimacy in authoritarian contexts using a survey experiment. By presenting three varying degrees of lay assessor participation (presence, deliberation, and voting), the experimental results reveal two key insights. On one hand, citizens in authoritarian regimes are aware that seemingly democratic institutions often serve as mere window-dressing façades. The exposure to the lay assessor’s system would only increase respondents’ evaluation of judicial transparency, judicial fairness, and “socialist democracy”, as well as the willingness to serve as lay assessors, when lay assessors have the power to vote. In other words, the Tocquevillian view that juries could further civic virtue is plausible in autocracies only if citizens know that they have substantial authority over judicial decision-making. On the other hand, when given the chance to opt into such a democratic institution, citizens have demonstrated confidence in lay assessors and welcomed their presence in trials across all treatment conditions, especially when respondents themselves anticipate having lawsuits before the court. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that Chinese citizens have high levels of trust in the government, citizens in fact embrace the jury-like system and perceive it as a viable external mechanism to hold the government accountable.

Authors

• Yingjie Fan, Princeton University

• Yutian An, Harvard University