The Party-State’s institutional and legislative reforms since the beginning of the Reform and Opening era reflect certain principles of order, fairness, and legality connected to the idea of a normative state. Yet, in recent years, there has been a marked expansion of a ‘prerogative-state’ system for the use of terror and violence in order to give effect to the will of the political leadership. Drawing on Fraenkel’s argument that the dual state is incapable of meeting the requirements of the law of reason (Vernunftrecht), Dr. Pils argues that the current Chinese Party-State ‘needs’ to reject liberal legal and political principles the more strenuously, the more obvious it becomes implicated in their violation, and consider the domestic and transnational implications of the prerogative state’s growth in China.
For friends who might have missed this lecture by Dr. Eva Pils, here is the webcast.