Public participation and its limits in legislative consultation: a case study on local legislation in China

ABSTRACT Broadly defined, public participation, as a part of the legislation process is widely accepted in various political regimes for engaging more citizens into the enactment and amendment of laws, regulations and policies, including the one-party states like China. However, public participation in China’s legislation, often described as ‘authoritarian legislation’, faces various challenges. This includes the lack of mature and institutionalised participation mechanisms and poor quality of participation and discussion per se. This paper, therefore, takes the legislative consultation on ‘Regulations on Protecting Historical and Cultural City of Huizhou (Huizhou regulation) (Huizhou Regulation ranked as local regulation according to its legal effect. Commonly, according to article 100 of China’s Constitution, local legislation refers to the activities that the local legislative bodies (broadly, legislative body in China only refers to the National People’s Congress (NPC) and its Standing Committee. The empowered local legislative bodies refer to the Local People’s Congress (LPC) and its Standing Committee and local government) to enact local regulations and local government regulations.)’ as a case study to explore the role of public participation in China’s emerging municipal-level legislation process. It examines public participation in various innovative formats, such as the conventional form of legislative hearing, in addition to the fixed consultative group and expert discussion team, etc. While these participations aimed to act as a means of improving the quality and legitimacy of the local legislation, they did so within the authoritarian rule setting. Thus, this paper analyses these limits by discussing what the participation and discussion in local legislative consultation in the context of authoritarian legislation looks like, and it argues despite the challenge of authoritarianism, public participation in local legislation contributes, in a non-confrontational manner, to the scientification (Kexuehua 科学化) of legislation in the Chinese context.