PAPER WITHDRAWN--Suing Government in China.

This article addresses the relationship between administrative law and democracy by examining the development of administrative litigation in China since the law formalizing judicial review of government action was introduced in 1989. My inquiry proceeds in three main parts. First, I consider the degree to which the availability of judicial review has served to strengthen the application of state law to government action. Drawing on my own and other available field research, I find evidence of some positive contributions in this regard, including examples of autonomous development of legal institutions and of legal professionalization within government departments. Nevertheless, the weight of the evidence suggests that extra-legal factors remain dominant in the resolution of citizen grievances, and in the incentives which structure government action.Building on these empirical findings, I proceed to consider what sort and degree of legalization of government action might be possible in an authoritarian setting. On the same evidence, I also note some limits to what legalization can contribute to socially beneficial and non-abusive governance in the first place. This analysis advances two distinct arguments for some greater degree of political pluralism in China: first, as a source of support for legal institutions, and second, as a source for political accountability where legal accountability is difficult to fashion or easy to evade.I conclude by noting some unexpected ways in which the experience of administrative litigation, whether or not lawsuits are successful on their own terms, may be contributing to the emergence of greater political pluralism in China. In particular, I focus on four overlapping areas of political activity and discourse that are rooted in administrative litigation: the regularized contention between citizens and the State that it sanctions; the narratives of government wrongdoing it can produce; the various types of interest groups it can help develop; and the accountability-based discourse it supports. I do not claim that these political dimensions of administrative litigation necessarily will lead to multi-party elections in China, but that they do represent a certain degree of political pluralism, in and of themselves, and may help open up space for greater degrees of pluralism in the future. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]