Michigan Prof-s

YuhuaWang is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Michigan. The author is grateful to Mary Gallagher, Ken Lieberthal, Bill Clark, Rob Franzese, Allen Hicken, Anna Grzymala-Busse, Rob Salmond,and participants at the Comparative Politics workshop at University of Michigan for advice and suggestions.

When Do Autocrats Build Clean Courts? Sub-National Evidence from China
Yuhua Wang
Department of Political Science
The University of Michigan
wangyh@umich.edu

Abstract
When do autocrats build clean courts? This paper seeks to address this question in
a Chinese context. I argue that foreign investors who hold mobile assets and have
a strong preference for a fair legal system are major players in pushing Chinese local governments to build clean courts. Chinese local officials, on the other hand, are induced to tie their own hands and become guarantors of judicial integrity when they rely on
foreign capital to promote economic growth because their political careers hinge on
economic performance. I then test this theory quantitatively using a cross-sectional
data set of 102 Chinese counties. The implication is that rule of law may not be the
result of external imposition (Acemoglu et al. 2001) but may actually develop from the internal incentive structure.