The New Dual State

Judicial Autonomy and Political Control in China
'The New Dual State' examines how regimes can institutionalize judicial autonomy without relinquishing ultimate political control. Revising the dual state theory beyond its classical and contemporary formulations, the book proposes the framework of symbiotic dualism, which argues that the consolidation of political authority can clarify and stabilize the boundary between legal order and extralegal authority, thereby producing a more autonomous judiciary in routine adjudication. Using China as the central case, the book shows how political centralization enabled the regime to insulate judges from local officials, suppress unsanctioned extrajudicial interventions, and channel politically sensitive disputes away from the courts. These measures have produced a legal order in which courts demonstrate increasing professionalism and autonomy in routine cases, while the regime retains decisive authority over politically salient matters. Grounded in extensive fieldwork and framed by comparative legal theory, the book advances a generalizable framework for understanding legality outside the context of liberal democracies.

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