Why Do Authoritarian Regimes Care about the Rule of Law? Evidence from Administrative Litigation and Elite Promotion in China.

Do authoritarian regimes care about the rule of law? By investigating China's political selection system, this paper finds that authoritarian regimes do care about the rule of law and promote it at the local level by providing local officials with promotion incentives when they enforce legal institutions effectively. This claim is demonstrated by examining rule of law measures in predicting local officials' promotion in China. Analysis of the State Council documents and 22 regulations covering over 70 percent of the countries' municipal leaders shows that formal evaluation rules for local leaders in some localities increasingly include metrics assessing the legal environment. Statistical analysis using a panel of administrative lawsuits in 279 prefectures in China during 2008-2012 supports the argument: the probability of prefecture party secretaries' promotion is highly correlated to rule of law concerns. Conversely, local officials who fail to maintain social stability, as indicated by their failure to appease social protests through legalized channels of dispute resolution, are less likely to be promoted. Using the 2011 Chinese General Social Survey data, this paper finds that citizens trust local governments more in prefectures with better legal environments, which explains why authoritarian rulers seek to promote the rule of law at the local level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]