Global Institutions, Indigenous Meaning: Lessons from Chinese Law for the New Institutionalism

Beyond Global Convergence: Conflicts of Legitimacy in a Chinese Lower Court

“…Efforts were made to make courts of all levels display a rational and professional outlook in the Western sense. Court procedures have become more formal and predictable along with the promulgation of the 1990 Administrative Procedure Law, the 1991 Civil Procedure Law and the 1996 Criminal Procedure Law; symbolic measures like the judge's gown and gavel were introduced and then added local meanings (Michelson 2005); more staff with legal education were recruited into the judiciary; and the organization of the courts became more specialized and bureaucratic, with a notable transformation of emphasis from criminal work to civil and economic work. As a basic‐level court, Court of Qinghe is no exception to these changes.…”

“…Legal institutions must legitimize multiple sources of legitimacy in order to survive in the local social settings. Therefore, as Ethan Michelson (2005) argues in his study on the symbols in China's legal reform (gown, gavel, law firm names, etc. ), global legal institutions are mediated by indigenous forces in ways that make them appear familiar and make sense to local users without altering their fundamental appearance to a global audience.…”

“…It is a typical bureaucratic structure in the Weberian sense (Weber 1978, 217–26), in which there is a clearly defined hierarchy of offices. As Michelson (2005) argues, this outlook of the judicial organization, together with other measures in China's legal reform, serve important symbolic functions in promoting investor confidence and political legitimacy at the global level. Nevertheless, as later sections will demonstrate, the behavior of this bureaucratic judicial organization is not always legal-rational, but largely mediated by its social environment.…”