The Limits of the Arbitrariness in Anticorruption by China’s Local Party Discipline Inspection Committees

Abstract

Based on interviews in local commissions of China’s Party discipline inspection (CDIs), this article investigates the effectiveness, internal limits and selectiveness of CDIs in the anticorruption campaign. It uses a micro-level analysis to explore the role of law in affecting the CDIs’ anticorruption work and concludes that local CDIs remain heavily affected by the same-level local governments, but are effective in combating local corruption due to recent reforms that have strengthened higher-level CDIs’ control over lower-level CDIs. The current internal decision-making systems of the CDIs make their anticorruption work heavily dependent upon the central leadership. Their work is still not institutionalized and relies heavily on higher-level intervention. Nevertheless, law played a crucial role by providing the bottom lines to set the decision-making standards at different stages. Legal reforms should aim to further clarify and lift these baseline standards.