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4 China L. & Soc'y Rev. 1 (2019)

handle is hein.journals/clscy4 and id is 1 raw text is: JCHINA LAW AND SOCIETY REVIEW 4 (2019) 1-40 CHINA LAW •~ t SOCIETY REVIEW BRILL brill.com/clsr Governing the Constitutional Vacuum - Federalism, Rule of Law, and Politburo Politics in China Ling Li* University of Vienna liing6234@gmaiL corn Wenzhang Zhou** Zhejiang University zhouwenzhang1993@gmaiLcom Abstract By focusing on the underlit corners of authoritarian governance in China, this article challenges the thesis that constitutions matter to authoritarian regimes because they provide solutions for problems of governance. We argue to the contrary: the constitu- tion appeals to the Chinese Communist Party (the Party or the ccP) because it does not provide solutions to fundamental issues of governance. Instead, such issues are kept out of the constitution so that they can be addressed by the Party through other regulatory mechanisms outside of the constitutional realm. In support of our thesis, we provide a unique review of the most up-to-date authoritative research on three key constitutional issues: central-local relations, party-state relations and power relations in the Politburo. These three issues correspond to three distinctive fields in China stud- ies that were treated only in isolation but here we consider them together under the single framework of authoritarian constitutional governance. Keywords authoritarian constitutionalism - Chinese Communist Party (cCp) - rule of law - federalism - Communist Party of China (cpc) - party-state - single party state - authoritarian governance - authoritarian resilience -XiJinping * Corresponding author. Ling Li teaches Chinese politics and law at the Department of East Asian Studies/Sinology, University of Vienna. ** Wenzhang Zhou is currently a PhD candidate at Guanghua Law School, Zhejiang University. 9 KONINKLIJKE BRILL NV, LEIDEN, 2019 1 DOI:10.1163/25427466-00401001

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