In-person event 

This study explores how Chinese procuratorates have achieved a paradoxical form of bottom-up self-empowerment despite judicial reforms explicitly designed to curtail prosecutorial discretion. To consolidate their institutional authority, procurators strategically expanded their administrative and legal reach into areas such as plea leniency, public interest litigation, and corporate compliance. This expansion derives legitimacy not only from classic Weberian dimensions—traditional, charismatic, and rational-legal authority—but is also deeply anchored in Zhao’s concept of "performance legitimacy," whereby procuratorates justify their institutional survival through governance outcomes after losing their anti-corruption mandate.

From a comparative perspective, the authority–legitimacy nexus in China’s judicial system reveals a distinct localized logic. It weaves together a Foucaultian reconfiguration of micro-power discourses, a Habermasian communicative consensus built through everyday administrative collaboration, an Arendtian self-evident deference to political bureaucracy, and a Weberian professional rationality. This dynamic consensus among legal practitioners circumvents the prohibitive costs of pure coercive coercion, ultimately reconstructing and solidifying the micro-foundations of the regime's overall legitimacy from below.

Speaker : 

• Qiang Fu (UBC)

Discutants: 

• Stéphanie Balme (CERI-Sciences Po / CNRS)
• Gustav Kalm (Sciences Po Law School)

Chair: 

• Jérôme Doyon (CERI-Sciences Po / CNRS)