What is a legislature?
We operate with many concepts when doing comparative politics. But, when we label things as different as the UK Parliament and the PRC National People's Congress with the word "legislature," are we damaging the concepts we're trying to use?And if we call China's NPC a legislature, what exactly are we talking about?
Take this article from Xinhua.
The headline is, "China's top legislature adopts new laws, approves ministers nomination, expels corrupt deputies"
The lead paragraph begins with, "China's top legislature closed its seven-day bimonthly session on Thursday..."
But if we look at our textbooks, we easily find out that the NPC meets yearly, not "bimonthly."
What's going on?
The article noted in the next paragraph, "The 170-member Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC) also voted to expel former top Shanghai official Chen Liangyu and three other corrupt deputies out of the national legislature..."
The meeting, then, is of the Standing Committee of the NPC, but the headline clearly says that "China's top legislature" had met.
In the Chinese political culture, is the Standing Committee basically the same as the NPC?
The Standing Committee "voted to add one clause to the Law on the Management of Urban Real Estate," adopted "four other laws and amendments," "approved the appointment of five ministers," and "ratified two international treaties."
So, should we call the NPC a legislature? Should we call the NPC's Standing Committee a legislature? Or should we call the Party Politburo and Secretariat a legislature, since that's the ultimate source of these laws and appointments?
Labels: China, concepts, legislature, pedagogy
posted by Ken Wedding @ 8:40 AM
1 Comments:
Ted Welsh wrote with an idea for teaching about government functions that's a good one.
He wrote, "All good questions -- and we all need to be challenged to sort items like these out for ourselves before we can begin to help students with them.
"To help teach this issue (where is the legislative clout in China?) I like the Iranian example of institutional power distribution.
"The legislative, executive and judicial functions are diffused over several institutions - some elected, some appointed, some overlapping.
"Students find this confusing at first glance, but a closer look forces students to see that power and authority distribution is the key to understanding how the system actually works.
"This can help to break down the assumption that all legislatures or executives or judiciaries in other systems merely mimic the more classic British or American systems."
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