Ruling Before The Law: The Politics Of Legal Regimes In China And Indonesia

Description

How do legal systems actually operate outside of Western European or North American liberal democracies? To understand law and legal institutions globally, we must go beyond asking if countries comply with idealized, yet under-theorized, rule of law principles to determine how they work in practice. Examining legal regimes across different areas of criminal and civil law in both urban and rural China and Indonesia during distinct periods from 1949 to the present, William Hurst offers a new way of understanding how cases are adjudicated (and with what implications) across authoritarian, developing, post-colonial, and newly democratizing settings. This is the first systematic comparative study of the world's largest Communist and majority-Muslim nations, and the most comprehensive scholarly work in many years on the micro-level workings of either the Chinese or Indonesian legal system at the grassroots, based on a decade of research and extensive fieldwork in multiple Indonesian and Chinese provinces. Cover Half Title Series page Title page Imprints page Contents List of Figures List of Tables Preface Introduction Chickens, Fertilizer, and Legal Regimes Ruling Before the Law Background and Significance Conceptual Framework and Motivating Questions Comparing China and Indonesia and Comparing within Each 1 Understanding Legal Regimes Introduction General Contours of Prior Scholarship Research on Comparative Legal Traditions Research on Law, Development, Authoritarianism, and Democratization Persistent Gaps and Remaining Lacunae Legal Regimes Differentiating Legal Regimes from Rule of LawLegal Regimes: Outline of a Concept Utility of Legal Regimes for Understanding Complex Realities Using Legal Regimes to Guide Empirical Analysis Distinguishing between Public and Private (or Criminal and Civil) Law Distinguishing between Urban and Rural Justice Systems The Logic of Comparison and Research Approach Internationalizing Subnational Comparison The Method Applied Data and Empirical Approach in Light of Prior Research Conclusion 2 An Historical Overview of Indonesian and Chinese Legal Regimes Introduction Crisis, Punctuated Equilibrium, and the Study of Legal InstitutionsThe Development of the Chinese Legal System before 1949 Chinese Courts and Legal Institutions, 1949-1978 The Chinese Legal System, 1979-2001 China's Legal System since 2002 The Development of the Indonesian Legal System under the Dutch Indonesian Legal Institutions during the Japanese Occupation, 1942-1945 The Indonesian Legal System in the Early Years of Independence, 1945-1957 The Indonesian Legal System through Crisis and Transformation, 1957-1974 The Indonesian Legal System under New Order, 1974-1998 Indonesia's Legal System since Reformasi and Democratization, 1998-2017Conclusion 3 Law and Revolution: Mobilizational Justice and Charismatic Politics Introduction Indonesia Paucity of Data on Urban Suits and Criminal Cases Rural Criminal Cases Rural Civil Suits Concluding Thoughts China Urban Areas Rural Areas Cases from the County P Public Security Bureau Concluding Thoughts Conclusion 4 Rule by Law: Authoritarian Legitimacy and Legal Efficiency Introduction China Civil Law in Rural Areas Civil Law in Urban Areas Concluding Thoughts Indonesia Criminal Law in Urban AreasCriminal Law in Rural Areas Concluding Thoughts Conclusion 5 Neotraditional Sclerosis: Law in the Service of Stagnant Hierarchies Introduction Indonesia Criminal and Civil Law from Independence to 1955 Criminal Law under New Order Civil Law under New Order Civil Law since Reformasi Criminalized Civil Disputes in the Present Day Concluding Thoughts China Strike Hard (Yanda): Neotraditional Criminal Law in the 1980s and Early 1990s Neotraditionalism against the Backdrop of Rapid Economic Reform, 1992-2002 Neotraditionalism in Criminal Law since 2002